


Arms Race

by fihli



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Earth, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Gen, I don't know what I'm doing, M/M, allura drives a truck, canon divergence all over the place, galra is an evil corporation, real lions, the slowest of slow burns
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-12
Updated: 2017-08-10
Packaged: 2018-10-03 02:51:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 24,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10234151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fihli/pseuds/fihli
Summary: A corporation hell-bent on devouring humanity and spitting out a version that suits them. The last dregs of a rebel tech company who succumbed and created the one thing that could destroy everything. Five superweapons, and the inexperienced hands that must wield them.Alternatively, seven people, five lions, and a truck save the world.





	1. Escape

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not even finished with season 2 of Voltron, but this idea grabbed hold of me and wouldn't let go. Consider this a sort of prologue, a taste of where we're going to be headed! /salutes

**ALLURA**

“STOP HER!”

Allura dodged another bioblast, ducking into a forward roll and coming up unscathed. She zigzagged, jumping back and forth as she raced down the hall, wheeling around corners and evading more shots. It was just like Galra Corp, she thought, to take something her father had invented for good and turn it into a weapon. That’s why she had to get to Voltron. She had to stop this before it began in earnest. Her head ached where one of the men had grabbed her by her braid.

The Galra lackeys weren’t closing in anymore; they were heavily weighed down by tech and she was quick and light on her feet, but she still didn’t slow down. She knew Galra headquarters like the back of her hand; the sprawling Colorado complex had been her home for eleven years as she and her father worked on Voltron. Skidding around another corner, Allura slammed her hand on the entry pad and prayed.

Her hand scanned purple, and the door slid open. Throwing a _thank you_ upwards, nowhere in particular, just toward the ceiling, Allura bolted farther in, towards the lions.

They didn’t trust her, she knew that. They had a mutual, grudging respect, after all, she had been the only one allowed near them after Zarkon killed her father, but respect didn’t equal trust. And the one thing that was going to get them all out of Galra headquarters in one piece was trust.

She let the first cage’s scanner bathe her dark hand in electric blue. The charged energy bars keeping the lion contained lowered, and she stepped forward. Black was curled in on herself, her purple eyes bright and alert as she slowly appraised Allura. Her tail twitched.

Two years prior, Allura’s father, under Galra instruction, had begun fusing his ATech with living organisms. She’d cried with him, kneeling on the floor, after every experiment —small birds, mice, stray cats and dogs that Galra lackeys pulled off of the streets— ended in casualties. She knew Zarkon and the rest of Galra Corp were trying to work their way up to human weapons, but the lions were the only ones that ever survived. They did more than survive; they thrived.

“Hey,” Allura said, hoping her voice was calmer than she felt. Black scared her the most, with her unnerving eyes and the splash of white on her chest. She was the biggest of the lions, and the leader. If she didn’t cooperate, there was no chance of—

Black heaved herself forward, knocking Allura to the side as she bolted from the cage room. Allura got to her feet in a heartbeat, mentally cursing and trying to block out the sound of fighting from farther down the hall, presumably Black taking on a battalion of Galra guards. She moved to the next cage and the next and the next, until the remaining three lions were freed. Blue left in the same way Black had, rushing for the door so quickly that Allura couldn’t do anything to stop her. 

She opened a cabinet and snatched the paladins’ bayards; mentally doing inventory as she shoved them into her bag. Red, yellow, blue, and green. No black, but that was to be expected. She ducked and managed to corral Green and Yellow in a corner, raising her hands like her father taught her, speaking loudly and with authority.

“I am Allura Altea, daughter of Alfor Altea, and I am the last member of ATech,” she said with as much volume as she could muster. “My father modified you, and, with my help, we’re going to escape.”

Green looked at her with silver eyes, the soft breeze from one of the vents ruffling her deep emerald fur, as Yellow paced back and forth. Yellow was huge, almost as big as Black, and her golden fur caught the light as she paced, claws clacking against the tile. As the lions appraised her, Allura turned away, smiling softly to herself as she heard them both follow.

There was no time to find Blue or Black. The lions were smart, far more intelligent than Galra gave them credit for, and would find their way, even if their way didn’t mean directly back to her. She knew they felt the draw towards their paladins, and it would be far quicker for her to find the paladins then the lions. She beckoned behind her to Yellow and Green.

“This way!”

They headed down a vacant hallway towards one of the loading docks, and Allura counted under her breath as they passed each one.

“Twelve… Thirteen… Yes! This one.” She beckoned to the remaining two lions as she hit the truck’s loading button and stepped back as the dock’s door slid open. A blur shot from inside the truck, and warm arms immediately wrapped around her, smothering and protective.

“Coran!” She pushed the man off of her, but there was no stopping him. He squeezed harder, only letting go when Yellow stepped closer and nudged her muzzle into his side. Leaping back, her father’s former schoolmate and top advisor adjusted his coat, brushing one quick hand across his moustache.

“Princess!” He snapped into a salute, and in the same movement, gestured towards the gaping inside of the truck. It was ATech, not Galra, and even in the heat of the moment the soft glow of machinery and the light blue interlocking symbol on the floor seemed like home. “Wait, I thought we had five lions?”

Allura ushered Yellow and Green inside and, after Coran followed, she hit the button again and dove through the doors right before they slammed shut. Coran shut the hatch after her, and she took the keys from his outstretched hand. The key fob had five keys dangling from it, the biggest one for the truck, and an ATech keychain.

“We have five lions,” she replied, heaving herself up using a bar on the side of the truck and through the window to the cab, and buckled herself into the driver’s seat. She moved around to get a feel for the gears while Coran followed, settling into the passenger seat. Yellow and Green crowded behind, getting up on their hind legs to peer into the cab. “Black and Blue got released and are on their way to the paladins. Red is in another Galra location, maybe in Arizona.”

“Maybe?” Coran asked. Allura raised an eyebrow.

“I don’t know for sure. Once we find the red paladin—”

“You keep saying that word, paladin,” Coran said. “It means hero. Champion, maybe?”

“It’s what my father called the only people who can bond with the lions,” she said. “I helped my father with them, I can talk to them and they understand me, but I can’t bond with them like the paladins can.”

“And where will we find these mystery paladins?”

Allura shrugged one shoulder. “The lions find them. The lions choose.”

In the back of the truck, Green and Yellow growled, a low rumble of thunderous agreement.

•••

Allura sat, her legs crossed in the most comfortable position she could get them, in the back of the truck. She’d allowed Coran to take the wheel while she rested, and Green, the smallest lion, was in the passenger seat beside him. Yellow was curled up, as far away from Allura as she could get, eyeing her warily. Allura wished she knew what the lion was thinking. She couldn’t imagine what they’d been through. Her father was kind, but Galra was not.

She couldn’t wait until they located the paladins. Her father had been assured that the lions would choose well, strong, dedicated men and women, people to join her in the fight against Galra, to take back ATech and use it to better the world instead of destroying it for profit. Her heart pounded; she missed her father so badly it stung like a wound.

This wouldn’t help, she told herself, sitting and feeling sorry for herself. She had things to do.

She pulled a chair over to one of the stations situated in the back of the truck, opening a hand mirror until it was four times it’s compacted size and leaning it against the truck’s wall. The truck itself was ATech, built by her father and entrusted to Coran before he’d been captured by Galra, complete with hidden bunks for the paladins and and a jostle-proof interior.

The only scissors were found in Coran’s tool kit, and she appraised her long white braid. Her white hair was a chemical mistake from one of her old experiments, and she’d grown to love the way it clashed with her dark skin. Tying it up was a pain, though, and she couldn’t shake the feeling of the Galra lackey’s hand closing around it, pulling hard enough to make her stumble.

She cut before she could have second thoughts, and her head was immediately lighter. Making more strategic snips under the low light, bending so she could see her handiwork in the mirror, Allura shook her head back and forth. _Chin length,_ she thought, _a bob._ It was nice. Freeing.

If it was anything she could appreciate, she thought as she ran a hand through her new short waves and gazing out the back window of the truck at the swiftly passing Colorado landscape, it was freedom. 

•••

“Princess!” Coran called, jostling her out of sleep. She was still in the truck, curled up against one of the walls, her head thrown back uncomfortably. She cracked her neck.

“What is it, Coran?” she asked. “And you can call me Allura, you know.”

( _Princess_ was a nickname from when she was younger, running around the former ATech headquarters, getting into everything and under everyone’s shoes. She’d never say it out loud, but hearing it was like walking across coals.)

“Yes, er, Pr— Allura,” Coran amended, coughing uncomfortably. “Me and Green have been up all night here, and I think we’re onto something.”

She heaved herself through the window, wedging herself between Coran and Green. The lion shifted, moving over to give her a little bit more room, and laid her big shaggy head on Allura’s lap. She patted it. Green had always been the nicest to her.

“I think it’s Black,” Coran continued, pointing towards a jagged range of mountains. “Now, I can’t be sure, but—”

Green growled. Coran coughed.

“We’re sure. Black is close.”

Allura pointed to the wheel and Coran obliged, they switched places and she jerked the wheel swiftly to the right. The truck turned off of the highway and onto the open plain, eating grass and sand as they drove. The wheels were the best in the world. _ATech_.

“Where are we?” she asked.

“Somewhere in New Mexico,” Coran replied. “You know what else is out here? That place we used to recruit from; the Galaxy Garrison.”

“A tech school?”

“Space exploration,” Coran corrected. “Pilots and engineers. God, I love ‘em.”

“Hm,” Allura hummed noncommittally and focused on the non-road. They were headed towards something, she could feel it humming in her bones, until she looked down and noticed it was only Green purring, a deep, vibrating undercurrent. She glanced over at Coran. “We’re close.”

The sun was only just beginning to rise over the mountains when they stopped right in front of a wall of brush and weeds, crackling brown in the hot summer air. Allura jumped down from the truck, followed by Coran and Green. Coran let Yellow out of the back and both lions bolted towards the brush.

“Wait!” Allura yelled, and headed after them.

One lion roared and Allura recognized it as Yellow, loud and maternal, and Green made a hissing noise underneath. She skidded around a red boulder and immediately into a fighting stance, despite not having a weapon, her fists raised. 

“Get away from our lion!”

“Wait, _your_ lion?” A boy, brown and gangly, crossed his arms in her direction. He was flanked by a bigger boy with darker skin and kinder eyes, and a smaller girl wearing a green hoodie and huge round glasses. “I thought it was this guy’s lion. Who the hell are you guys?”

There was another person, sprawled in the dirt behind the three newcomers, dressed all in black except for his silver right arm. A spot of red blossomed on his side like he'd been shot, and he groaned like he’d been lying there for a long time. Black hovered in front of him, pacing between him and Allura. 

“That’s Shiro,” the girl with the glasses whispered reverently, like Allura was supposed to know who that was. The man, _Shiro_ , moaned again and Black rumbled protectively. 

“He’s the black paladin,” Allura said. Coran’s eyes widened.

“The black paladin.”

“Literally, what the shit’s a paladin?” the gangly boy asked, nudging the girl with one elbow.

The leader of Voltron moved, making an enormous effort to sit up, and scanned them all with wild, sleep-deprived eyes. He had a shock of white mingled with black hair, and his mechanical arm whirred softly.

“Where am I? Who are you?”

Allura crossed her arms. “I should be asking _you_ that question, black paladin.”

“What are you talking about? My name’s Shiro,” he said, and gestured with one hand at the black lion, the purple-eyed leader of the pack that her father had created, the one who would save them all from Galra. “And that’s Nova.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Comments/kudos are immensely appreciated, and you can always find me to yell about paladin-related things at fihli.tumblr.com!
> 
> -Gab


	2. It's All In Your Head

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance is hearing mysterious noises, so he, Hunk, and Pidge sneak out of the Garrison to investigate.

**LANCE**

_Thirteen hours before…_

The growling wouldn’t stop.

Lance had tried everything; burying his head in his arms, jamming his earbuds in and turning the volume up as high as it could go, talking louder, _thinking_ louder. Nothing worked. Everything was still undercut by a low, soft rumbling, like listening to a plane taking off through a thick piece of foam. It had started an hour ago, at the beginning of class, and Lance honestly had no idea what the professor was even talking about.

It wasn’t fair, anyway, he thought, that he had to be stuck in the same class as his friends. He couldn’t concentrate on a good day, not when Hunk sat directly behind him and Pidge directly in front. It didn’t take much, Hunk making a noise or Pidge serving some dry comment as only Pidge could, to make Lance crack up or lose it completely. He’d been called out four times just in the past week, and threatened with expulsion once. 

(That actually unnerved him a little. Like hell was he going to end up like _Keith_.)

And he was _trying_ to concentrate. He just couldn’t, not with something growling in his ear for an hour. He tapped his fingers on the desk, silently willing the professor to give them their weekend homework and dismiss the class already. He had half a bag of Fritos in his dorm and Hunk promised he’d make dinner for the three of them, and anything Hunk made was bound to be great. 

He met Hunk in high school, junior year, and the two of them immediately hit it off. They were both bound for Galaxy Garrison; Hunk was a brilliant mechanic and Lance? Well, Lance loved space.

(He found out soon enough that _loving space_ wasn’t quite enough to keep his grades up, but he managed.)

The two of them roomed together and, with some help from the single dorm across the hall and its occupant, a computer specialist and inventor named Pidge Gunderson, made the school liveable. He was only sixteen compared to Hunk and Lance, who were both nineteen, and relatively tiny, but he was a genius. The three of them made the best team, and together they terrorized Galaxy Garrison. 

Lance’s phone pinged.

**small**

PG: you gotta stop tapping your fingers like that

PG: i’ll kill you lance. i will

LM: lmao sorry man……… i cant handle this fucking growling anymore. tell me u can hear it

PG: growling?

PG: you’re hearing things.

LM: ur no help im asking hunk

Lance rolled his shoulder back, stretching the muscle as he typed another message.

**large**

LM: HUNK

HG: Sup, Medium?

LG: tell me u can hear growling. it started like an hour ago and its driving me up the damn wall

LM: THE DAMN WALL, HUNK

HG: Uh, no growling here

HG: Class ends in 5, do you need to go to the med bay?

LM: hunk when have i ever in my entire life needed to go to the med bay

Lance didn’t turn around, but he could feel Hunk rolling his eyes behind him. The growling continued, the soft rumbling as an undercurrent to whatever the professor was saying. If he relaxed, unclenched his fists and kept breathing, tapping his fingers to the rhythm, it was actually almost nice. Like a song, like a lullabye—

“McClain!” 

Lance’s head shot up. The professor glared at him.

“Do you need to be excused?”

“Uh, no, ma’am,” Lance said, probably a little too loudly, because Pidge whipped his head around and gave him a dirty look. “I’m fine.”

After class let out, Pidge whirled on him, jabbing an accusatory finger right to his chest.

“What the hell’s up with you?” he asked, his voice going all shrill like it tended to do when he got mad. “Go to the doctor if you need to, but stop distracting me in class!”

“Listen, I’m not going crazy and I _don’t_ need a doctor,” Lance said, leaning back against Hunk. “I’ve been hearing all this growling in my head for the past hour, and I need to know what it is. Come with me?”

“You don’t want dinner?” Hunk asked. Pidge shrugged his backpack higher on his slim shoulders.

“I have homework.”

Lance shot them both his best look, the chin-dipped, wide-eyed, McClain look, the _I need something please help me my best friends in the world_ look. Hunk caved immediately, nodding and looping his arm around Lance’s shoulders.

“Let’s do it.”

Pidge’s shoulders slumped and he let out a huge, longsuffering sigh.

“I give you _thirty minutes_.”

•••

They didn’t find anything.

The growling was still happening, deep in Lance’s ear. Sometimes it was quieter, but once, right by the observation deck, it was almost a roar. He’d dropped to his knees and Hunk was right beside him in an instant, heaving him back up with his arm around Hunk’s neck. Pidge flitted around, holding different equipment up to the sky, to Lance’s head, to the ground. He couldn’t make heads or tails of it, and neither could Hunk, and neither could Lance. They eventually called it a night and headed back to the dorms; after bowls of cereal Hunk crashed on the floor and Pidge curled onto his bottom bunk, leaving Lance to climb to the top bunk in silence.

Well, silence and the growling’s constant companionship.

Lance lay there with his arms behind his head, the soft glow of Pidge’s laptop bathing the ceiling in blue; his pictures of home, of his mom, their house in Cuba with the pool in the backyard. He hadn’t been home in months. They were all so proud of him, their Lance, in the hotshot space school, poised to change the world.

_Change the world_. He couldn’t even ace a test.

The growling intensified, just a tiny bit, but in the silence it was deafening.

Lance groaned.

“What do you want?” he asked, whispering upwards. 

_**You.**_

“Shit!” Lance shot up, knocked his head on the ceiling, slapped his hand on the already forming bruise, and cursed again. Below him, Pidge rustled and Hunk woke with a start.

“Huh? Whazzgoinon— What—”

“Are you okay, Lance?” Pidge asked, soft and concerned.

“The growling, it—” he massaged his head with one hand and groaned. “It talked to me.”

“Really.” Pidge sounded unimpressed, but Hunk stood and pulled himself onto Lance’s bunk. The two of them barely fit, but they’d done it a million times.

“What did it say?”

“It was getting louder,” Lance said. “I couldn’t handle it, so I just asked what it wanted. And then it got really _really_ loud, and just said _YOU_.”

“Hm.” Pidge.

“Fuck!” Hunk.

“We gotta go find it,” Lance said, pushing Hunk off of the bed with his feet until the bigger boy gave in and climbed down. “I don’t know what we’re gonna do when we find it, but—”

“We’re just going to run into the desert, in the middle of the night, looking for a voice that only you can hear?” Lance couldn’t see Pidge, but he’d bet actual money on his eyebrow being raised. “That doesn’t sound very smart.”

“Since when do I do smart things?”

“Checkmate,” Hunk said. Pidge huffed out a laugh.

“Fine. But next time I need you for an experiment—”

“Yeah, yeah, you can hook me up to your machines until the end of time, whatever!” Lance jumped off of his bunk like he’d done every morning since coming to the Garrison, grabbed his backpack, and was off like a shot, Hunk right behind him and Pidge following, his arms full of tech and grumbling something about sleep.

“Where should we start?” Hunk asked as soon as they made it out of the dorms undetected. Pidge adjusted his glasses.

“I might have somewhere.”

•••

“How’d you find this place?” Lance asked.

They were on the Garrison’s roof, in a secluded part jutting off from the rest of it, secret and safe with a perfect view of the stars. Lance would have been content to sit there for the rest of the night, watching the deep blue slowly melt into a watercolor sunrise, but Pidge had other plans and so did the growling, which had settled into the base of his neck like an old friend.

“I come up here, er, sometimes,” Pidge said, arranging his equipment like he’d done a million times. “It has a good range, uh, and I look for stuff.”

“Like what?”

“Galra Corp signals,” he muttered. 

“What was that?”

“I’m trying to spy on Galra,” Pidge said loudly. “Okay? They stole my dad and my brother when I was twelve. I’m going to build whatever it takes to get them back.”

“Whoa,” Hunk said.

“I didn’t know that.” Lance took a seat next to Pidge, and put a hand on his shoulder. “We can help, you know, later.”

“It’s fine,” Pidge said, swiping an arm across his nose. “Let’s figure this out first and then we can talk about my family issues. And, y’know, how I’m going to take down the biggest corporation in the world.”

“All in a night’s work.” Hunk said, and collapsed on Pidge’s other side.

Pidge worked in silence for a while, muffled beeps and clicks sometimes breaking through the growling in Lance’s mind. He tried to relax, finding constellations and patterns in the stars like his mom had taught him when he was little. Hunk whistled softly, a rhythm Lance didn’t know, and Pidge talked quietly to his machines.

“Wait,” Hunk said, breaking the reverie. “What’s that?”

He pointed down, towards the desert, and Lance saw it too. A trail of dust in front of a blur, unrecognisable from a distance, that sometimes glowed in purple bursts. Lance shot to his feet.

“I don’t know if that’s what we’re looking for, but we gotta go down there.”

“It’s too far away,” Hunk said. “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m not running two miles in the middle of the night. I wouldn’t run two miles even if you paid me.”

“We can steal one of the rovers,” Lance said, moving from one foot to the other as Pidge packed up his equipment and Hunk looked on, unimpressed. “We just have to get a security badge off one of the professors, or maybe a janitor has one? I can maybe—”

“Like this?” Pidge held up a Galaxy Garrison badge, security level two. “I’m pretty sure this can get us a rover.”

“What the hell, Gunderson?” Hunk grabbed the badge. “Where’d you even get this?”

Pidge shrugged. “Forged it?”

“I love you!” Lance took the badge from Hunk and held it up victoriously. “Let’s go get this growling out of my head once and for all!” 

They raced down to one of the hangars, piled into a rover, and took off, making sure the hatch closed behind them. Pidge drove, keeping the headlights on low and focused on the ground. Hunk took lookout, keeping a pair of Pidge’s night vision binoculars trained on the Garrison in case someone saw them sneaking out. And Lance talked to the growling.

“Listen, I don’t know what you are, but we’re coming to find you,” he muttered, soft enough that neither Pidge or Hunk heard him. “If you’re in trouble, I’m going to help. If you’re dangerous, well, so am I.”

It was quiet, until—

_**Wrong way.**_

Lance grabbed Pidge’s shoulder.

“Turn around!”

“But this is the direction that thing went,” Pidge argued. 

“The voice just talked to me again! We’re going the wrong way.”

“Hell no,” Pidge said, turning the rover around a pile of brush and a huge boulder. “We’re seeing what that thing is. You can’t drag me off into the desert and expect me not to _find out what that thing is!_ ”

Lance spluttered. “ _But it’s the wrong way!_ ”

“Guys?” Hunk asked. He’d turned around and now had his binoculars trained right in front of their rover. “Uh, guys, are you seeing this?”

Pidge skidded the rover to a stop and Hunk tossed his binoculars onto the seat, and all three of them piled out. The sun was slowly starting to rise, bathing everything in mystical shades of blue, and Lance took an unwilling step forward. 

It was a lion.

A gigantic lion, pacing in front of a wounded man lying on his back in the sand. Its fur was jet black, with a shocking white patch on its chest, and its eyes glowed purple. With its ears back, defensive, it growled, deeper and scarier than the growl still rumbling in Lance’s head.

“Holy fuck,” Hunk muttered.

“Is that a prosthetic?” Pidge, despite the lion, stepped forward towards the injured man. “Oh my god, _Shiro?_ ”

“Wait, Shiro?” Lance jogged up to meet Pidge. “Takashi Shirogane, the Garrison grad who went missing? _That_ Shiro?” 

“He was taken by Galra Corp,” Pidge explained, eyes wide behind his glasses. “With my dad and my brother. I’ve been looking for him, too.”

The lion roared, then, a sonic boom of sound that made the hair on Lance’s arms stand on end. The growl in his mind reciprocated, roaring back, and he fell to his knees and screamed. The man on the ground, _Shiro_ , sat up, and then everything was noise; his screaming, the lion roaring, his mind roaring, Shiro screaming. 

Among this, Hunk yelled.

“We got incoming!”

Lance forced himself to stop, to gulp air, to turn around. A truck was approaching, off-roading in a haze of sand and heat and sunrise, and something else was behind it, a motorcycle that Lance could only make out when he squinted.

_No, that can’t be, not him—_

“What do we do?” Pidge asked, moving closer to Hunk and Lance. The black lion in front of Shiro had started to pace again, and he wasn’t moving, bent over and clutching his wounded side.

Lance shrugged, his eyes still trained on the red motorcycle trailing the truck.

“We wait for them to catch up.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to start updating this fic on Sunday nights! See you on the 19th :)
> 
> As always, thanks for reading! Comments/kudos are immensely appreciated, and you can always find me to yell about paladin-related things at fihli.tumblr.com!
> 
> -Gab


	3. Voices In The Desert

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith sees something mysterious, and follows it.

**KEITH**

The motorcycle was a piece of shit, but it was Keith’s piece of shit, and that was the end of it. Riding it meant shuddering engines and half-assed repair jobs and too many haphazard prayers thrown around every time he made a turn or passed someone on the highway. _Prayer_ meaning he’d glance towards the sky, lean forward to balance, and repeat the same three words. A mantra. A prayer.

_Patience yields focus…_

It was what he was muttering as he sped down the dark road after the truck, making sure to keep a safe distance to not draw attention to himself. He found it hard to slow down, to pull back, to keep his distance. He always had. Even after his time at the Garrison, he had no self-preservation. Common sense? Sure. Keith Kogane had buckets of common sense. But it was hard to listen to common sense when he had no interest in his own well-being. 

_Patience yields—_ Shit!” Keith swerved, dodging some lump in the middle of the road, an animal, maybe, and kept on after the truck. It had passed his house (it was a shack, sure, and yeah it was in the middle of the desert, but it was the closest he could get to the Garrison without being suspicious), and it was heading straight towards where the streak landed.

The streak was weird. Keith was always on alert, it was part of his biological makeup after all these years, but for once he’d been relaxing. Out on his porch, feet up, playing a game on some battery-charged handheld that was probably older than he was. Shacks in the desert didn’t offer a lot by way of technological upgrades. He’d almost been dozing off when he saw the streak.

It wasn’t bright, more like a dark blur that happened to be a slightly darker black than the night sky, racing across the desert where the sand touched space. It glimmered every so often, a flash of purple, and Keith had his bike out before he even knew what he was doing. As soon as he saw the truck, shining against the inky night, he knew something big was happening.

So he’d followed.

Someone moved in the truck’s cab, a flash of brown skin, one eye looking deadly close to where he was. He swore, and flicked off his already dim headlights.

He ducked down and wove along the highway, daring to get a little closer and a little closer with each nudge of the gas. He couldn’t see anything, the raven blackness of the night was like a blanket wrapped around his shoulders; the only thing guiding him was the truck. He pushed forward.

As he got closer, the truck’s design got clearer. It was sleek and ergonomic, with slight design differences setting it apart from other eighteen-wheelers. People passing on the highway wouldn’t notice the curved top or the rows of faintly glowing blue lights ringing the wheel, but Keith had nothing better to do than appreciate it. There was even a logo on the back, hastily removed, but the shadow of it still remained. _ATech_.

It bumped around in Keith’s brain for a while, almost like he’d heard it talked about around the Garrison or before, when his parents were still alive, but he couldn’t quite remember it clearly. He came to his senses right away, before the truck turned and went completely off-road.

“Are you kidding me?” Keith groaned, and followed, skidding over sand before the bike found its bearing. The bike had been Shiro’s, before Shiro went and got himself taken by some corporation greedy for his mind. Keith had cobbled it together with old parts from the shed behind his desert shack, and it ran all right. Not well enough in rough terrain, he thought as his teeth jostled together, but fine anyway.

Shiro was going to kill him once he learned that Keith had gone and painted his motorcycle red. What could he say? It was a cool color, and it matched his jacket.

Once he learned. _If he learned_.

“Shut the hell up,” Keith muttered to no one in particular and pressed on.

The truck was gaining speed, so Keith accelerated, flipping on his lights again when he barely missed a giant dip in the sand. Whoever was driving (frankly, like a maniac) already knew he was there. Dim headlights weren’t going to change that. 

He thought about speeding up, passing the truck, and finding out what the streak was first, but as soon as he tried, approaching the passenger’s side to pass, he recoiled. Whoever was sitting in the passenger’s seat had a _gun_ , or at least a white gun-shaped _thing_. Keith dropped back farther. He wasn’t about to get into a tangle with guns, at least not unarmed. He was reckless, not stupid.

He ducked farther down, straddling the motorcycle and revving up, giving it all he got as the truck gained even more speed, the circle lights on the wheels glinting in the darkness. What kind of eighteen-wheeler could do that?

Despite everything— the streak, the guy with a gun, the weird ass truck, the late night turning to early morning— Keith grinned. This was more like it. He was a loner, sure, but he’d be lying if he said that he hadn’t missed excitement.

(Not enough to try and go back to the Garrison. Fuck that place.)

Keith followed the truck around a boulder and a collection of scrubby bushes, skidding to a stop right behind it and almost flipping the bike. He planted both feet on the ground and bent over the handlebars, breathing heavily as he did a mental check.

_All limbs? Check. Bike still running? Check. Head still on straight? Check. If Shiro were here he’d ream me out for not wearing a helmet. Well I’d just say—_

The next breath Keith was about to draw in caught in his throat as he raised his head. Two people had dismounted from the truck; a girl with shockingly white hair and a slim, bouncy redheaded man, but Keith didn’t care about them. A gigantic black lion was pacing in front of a group of three, one of whom was wearing a Garrison hoodie, but Keith didn’t care about that. 

The only thing Keith cared about was laying on his back in the dirt.

“SHIRO!” 

Keith catapulted off of his bike, not even bothering to set the stand, and it fell to its side as he raced across the sand. The girl dove in front of him but he dodged around her, and ducked under the man’s outstretched arms. He pushed through the group of three, ignored whatever the tall, gangly one screeched at him, and ran towards—

“ _God!_ ” Keith jumped back as the lion— fucking hell on earth, he forgot about the _lion_ — swiped at him with paws the size of his chest. It growled, a thunderclap of noise that had him backpedaling immediately. Despite the absurdity of fighting an actual lion in the desert, Keith tried to run around it, his mind on one thing. “Shiro! Man, can you hear me? Shiro!”

“Keith?” 

He heard Shiro say his name, and he stopped in his tracks. The lion eyed him, still growling, still keeping one limb protectively in front of Shiro. _It’s okay,_ Keith tried to tell himself, and made himself keep breathing. _Shiro remembers you, at least. Who knows what happened to him or why he disappeared, but he remembers._

“Keith?” Shiro repeated, and Keith heard him groan, like he’d tried to stand up but failed miserably and passed back out. He must be wounded. Keith glared at the lion. The lion bared its teeth right back.

“Listen,” he said, “I don’t know what the hell you’re doing in a desert and I don’t know what you want with Shiro, but I haven’t seen him in _two years_ and you’re gonna have to—”

Someone grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him away from the lion. It wasn’t a nice pull, either, it was a forceful _shove_ that almost sent Keith sprawling. He picked himself up and kept his glare, but trained it on the shover; the gangly boy, the almost too-tall individual who looked absolutely filled to the brim with sarcasm and bad decisions. He looked like he belonged, like he was meant to be standing behind a rock with a lion at six in the morning. 

In short, he was spluttering, and he looked ridiculous. Keith crossed his arms.

“You’re not one-upping me with this, too, Kogane, I’m not letting you!” he went on. Keith raised an eyebrow at the last name before the other boy could combust.

“And who are you?”

More spluttering. “Lance? Lance McClain, we were— We were _rivals!_ ”

_The hell?_ “I’ve never had a rival in my life.”

“Okay, that’s just insulting.” The boy, Lance, crossed his arms too, but in a pouting sort of way that made Keith want to roll his eyes more than he’d ever wanted to roll his eyes in known memory. “Back at Garrison? Before you _dropped out?_ ”

“Oh.” Now he remembered, kind of, like a hazy vision he hadn’t really paid attention to the first time around. Eager hands on the controls of the simulation chair next to his, a stream of chatter a mile a minute even— especially —when he was piloting, an arm-pumping handshake on the very first day of class, a brown hand in his pale one, _Hey man! I’m Lance, Lance McClain!_ Now he remembered.

“You never made it past level four of the sim,” he said, instead of something more polite. Lance’s face fell, and Keith almost felt bad, until he bounced back.

“Yeah, well, I took your spot in Advanced, so thanks, I guess,” he returned, and then there was a big, protective hand on his shoulder, a girl stepped in front of him like she’d defend his honor if she had to, and the white-haired girl from the truck pushed through them and approached the lion.

“Whoa!” Lance said, making a move to hold her back, but she dodged him. “That’s a lion, lady, I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but—”

The girl whipped her head around, and shot Lance with the kind of icy glare that Keith could feel from yards away. “I know more than you. Keep back.”

She had an accent, a slight inflection on her vowels. English, maybe. Keith had never been good at placing accents. She took another step closer to the lion, and its— _her_ , Keith told himself, _it’s a female lion_ —otherworldly purple eyes followed her every move.

“Black,” she said, and held out her hand. “Have you found your paladin?”

The lion, Keith found himself staring, his jaw practically on the sandy ground, dipped her head and placed her forehead right on the girl’s dark hand and closed her eyes. The girl closed her eyes, too, and briefly, so quick that Keith almost missed it, the lion’s forehead glowed purple.

“There.” The girl dropped her hand and craned her neck to look at Shiro, still laying, stunned, on his back in the dirt. “It’s done. My father put the chip in my wrist, I’m the only one who can assign paladins.”

She said all this quickly and efficiently, like she was speaking complete sense.

“Hey, I asked this question earlier and it still stands,” Lance spoke up. “What the shit’s a paladin?”

“It means champion,” the girl behind Lance, the one with hair that looked like bird wings, said. At the word _champion_ , Shiro sucked in a strangled gasp and got to his feet, heaving in air and leaning over like he was going to throw up.

“You gonna yak, man?” the big guy behind the bird-wing girl asked. “Been there.”

The white haired girl raced to his side and propped him up, with one arm slung around her shoulders. Keith realized with a jolt that Shiro had a metal prosthetic instead of his right arm. _What the hell happened to you, man?_

“I have to get him into the truck,” she said, speaking over their heads to the redheaded man, the one, Keith remembered, that had a gun. “We can talk about the paladins later. You’re coming with us.”

This was to Lance and his friends, and, Keith realized as he looked around, to him, too. 

“I’m not going anywhere,” the bird girl said. The big guy crossed his arms. 

“Why would we do that?”

“Because you’re chosen,” the girl replied in her calm voice, like everything was normal, like this was just another night in the desert. She gestured behind the two of them, and Keith realized there were two _other_ lions, waiting in the shadows. The girl jumped back and the guy did too, hiding behind her.

The first lion, the big golden one, approached the boy. He gulped. The white haired girl gestured encouragingly after handing Shiro off to the redheaded man.

“Hold out your hand. Um, your name?”

“Hunk,” he said quickly, and gulped again. “Hunk Garrett?”

“Very well. Hold out your hand, Hunk Garrett.”

Hunk did as he was told, and the girl stepped between him and the lion, taking his hand and placing her palm on the lion’s forehead. It only took a heartbeat for the desert to be bathed in gold. Hunk looked up at the lion ( _his_ lion?) in awe as she rumbled and ducked down, nudging him with her shoulder. 

He laughed and pushed back. “Oh my god, you guys, I’m chilling with a _lion_!”

Keith glanced over at Lance, who looked halfway between terrified and jealous. The white-haired girl beckoned for the bird girl’s hand. 

“And your name?”

“Pidge,” she said, “Gunderson.”

“Green has been watching you this entire time. I think—” she put her free hand on the forest colored lion’s forehead and a dark green light engulfed the dawn. “—she likes you.”

Pidge grinned up at the lion. “Hey.”

“I’m Allura, by the way,” she said, and offered Pidge her hand. “It’s always nice to have another girl around.”

“Wait, wait, Pidge isn’t a girl,” Lance burst out. “I don’t tell you how to run your lions, lady, but don’t come in here and tell my friends—”

“Uh, Lance? She’s right,” Pidge broke in. “I needed to get into Garrison, so I changed my name from Katie to Pidge and cut all my hair off… It’s, uh, a long story. We’ll talk about it later.”

Lance sputtered some more. Keith smirked. He’d been going through an extreme range of emotions in a very short amount of time, and it was almost entertaining.

“Did you know about this?” he shot at Hunk. The big guy shrugged.

“Yeah? Didn’t know it was a big secret.”

“What the hell!”

“There’ll be a lot of time to talk in the truck,” Allura said. “We still have two more lions to find.”

“There’s more of them?” Keith asked. He couldn’t stop the undercurrent in his voice, it was something he hadn’t felt in a long time. Hope, maybe. He didn’t know what was going on, but Shiro had gotten tangled in it way before he had. The only thing Keith really knew was he only felt safe when he was with Shiro.

He’d spent two years without safety, and he wasn’t about to go back.

“Wait, there’s more lions?” Lance’s eyes were wide. Keith knew he was right about the jealousy; there was no way Lance was going to say no now that his friends had been inducted by whoever this Allura person was.

And (a small part of Keith was embarrassed by this), he wasn’t about to let Lance get all the glory.

“There are two more lions,” Allura responded. “Red and Blue. I’m not sure which lion has bonded with who—”

“That’s it!” Lance actually jumped into the air. “The growling! That has to be one of the lions trying to talk to me— HA!”

He pointed a finger at either Hunk or Pidge, Keith couldn’t tell.

“I told you I wasn’t nuts! I know where the lion is.”

This was to Allura, who shrugged. 

The redheaded man gestured to the truck, where Shiro and the black lion already were settled. “Let’s go get it, then!”

They all followed the man. Keith watched as Hunk boosted Pidge up into the hatch and heaved himself in after her, holding out one hand for Lance. Keith exhaled, turning his back on the truck for a second and raking both hands through his dark hair. 

The sun had risen without him realizing it, spraying beams of light across the red desert. He could see the mesa in the distance, jagged cacti and mirage puddles between him and the horizon. The sand in front of him was all disheveled, the consequences of a huge pacing lion, but as he watched, the wind blew and all was returned to flat normality.

The night could be like that, he thought to himself, watching a bird wheel overhead. He could take his bike, go back to the shack, and no one would be wiser. Live a normal life. Destroy his conspiracy boards about Shiro’s whereabouts, because he knew Shiro was in the back of a truck with a lion protecting him.

He laughed to himself. _Yeah, right._

The sun continued to rise, and Keith squinted. Somewhere out there was a lion that, for some reason, had laid a claim on him. He could join them, Hunk, Pidge, _Shiro_ , if he found her. _If_.

“Hey, Red,” he spoke out into the desert, feeling vaguely like an idiot and hoping no one in the truck could hear him. He didn’t know if his lion was the red one, but hey. His bike was red, his jacket was red. He used red string on his conspiracy boards. “I don’t know where you are, but that girl, Allura, said we have a connection. Maybe. I don’t know. All I know is—”

Everything stopped. The sand stopped moving, the bird stopped flying, and Keith stood in shocked silence as a commanding voice tore a jagged hole through space and time itself.

_**Find me.**_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thanks for reading! Comments/kudos are immensely appreciated, and you can always find me to yell about paladin-related things at fihli.tumblr.com!
> 
> -Gab


	4. Three Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Three paladins bond with their lions.

**PIDGE**

It wasn’t exactly a typical Friday morning.

Pidge shifted on the bunk Allura had pointed her to. It was almost comfortable; a flat mattress, a white pillow, a standard issue blanket, almost like her bed back at the Garrison. One difference was her bunk mate, who just happened to be a giant green lion.

It was nice, Pidge reasoned, having a lion curled around her as her legs dangled off of the bunk. She could barely feel the truck rumbling underneath, Allura had said something about ATech jostle-proof rigging that Pidge was definitely going to check out later, and the lion, who Allura had called _Green_ , was soft and warm. 

It wasn’t a very creative name, Pidge mused as she ran a hand down Green’s head. She was the smallest of the three lions in the truck, but she still was almost spilling off of the bunk. Lance was underneath, curled up with his back pressed to the truck’s wall and his legs drawn up beneath his chin in his classic pouting pose. She knew he wanted his lion, wanted to figure out why he’d heard her in his head before all of this had started.

Pidge just wanted to know why she couldn’t hear Green _at all_. Lance claimed that his lion spoke to him twice, and Keith, not to be outdone, had demanded they go look for his lion first since she’d commanded him to find her back in the desert. Keith thought his lion was the red one, which would leave Lance with Blue. Pidge thought it fit him.

“Hey, girl,” she said softly, leaning farther into Green. She’d picked up on the whole lion thing quicker than she thought. It was like having a cat, but huge, and dangerous. Pidge liked cats. They kept their distance and looked like they knew too much. “Listen, you don’t _have_ to talk to me, but if we’re going to be, I don’t know, friends? I think that—”

**_Pidge?_**

Pidge sat up straight like an arrow. “Uh, Lance?” she asked, bending down to look under her bunk. He was still sitting, same position, same expression. Pouting.

“Yeah, girl Pidge?”

She rolled her eyes. It wasn’t her fault he was about as imperceptive as a cactus. Hunk knew, he’d known for months, and she always figured they’d talked about her when she wasn’t around. 

“Listen, I don’t care what you think about my gender right now, McClain, I have a lion question.”

He shot out from under his bunk immediately and was on top of hers in a heartbeat, nudging Green with his ass until she shot him a glare and hopped off of Pidge’s bunk, retreating to the corner where Hunk was sitting with Yellow and Coran. She paced in front of them for a while, and retreated back to Lance’s bunk and presumably made herself comfortable. 

“I’m just pissed you didn’t tell me,” Lance said, moving closer to her on the bunk, shifting until the blanket was wrapped around his shoulders and the pillow was in his lap. Lance was nothing if not constantly comfortable; his bunk back at the Garrison was covered in more throw pillows than Pidge’s grandma’s couch. “I can keep a secret, Pidge, what the hell!”

“I joined Garrison to find out where my brother and father got taken,” she said, scratching her temple with her pointer finger, nudging her glasses and pushing them back up when they almost fell. “They knew me as a girl so I had to come up with a disguise. My real name’s Katie Holt.”

“ _Katie—_ Wait, Matt Holt is your brother?”

“Yeah.” She swallowed hard. “I think they were taken by Galra Corp, but I don’t know why.”

“Okay, okay, okay,” Lance said, waving his hand. “It’s way too late— early? —for that, Katie-Pidge. Lion question?”

“Just Pidge,” she replied, ramming her shoulder into Lance’s the way they always did, before every simulation, studying on top of his bunk, in the kitchen with Hunk while they made plans to steal tastes. “Same old. And what did it sound like when your lion talked to you?”

“I thought I was crazy.” Lance smirked. Pidge fought the urge to hit him again.

“Well, I’m currently sharing head-space with a giant green lioness, so maybe you’re not so crazy after all.”

Lance nudged her back, shoulder to shoulder, and it was so normal that Pidge almost started tearing up. The sun was rising over the Garrison; she had a test to ace and a sim to run with her team, but instead…

“When Blue talked to me it was loud,” Lance said. “But gentle. She wasn’t commanding, she was… I don’t know, nice. But firm. Kind of like my mom.”

“Lion mom,” Hunk called from across the truck.

“Shut up, man!” Lance flung back.

“Hm,” Pidge mused, looking down. She could see Green’s tail twitching underneath her. “Green wasn’t like that. She asked me a question.”

“What was it?”

“My name. _Pidge?_ ”

“ _Pidge?_ ” Lance repeated, but in a ridiculously dramatic deep voice. She laughed.

“No, a little quieter than that. And not so deep, damn.”

Lance shrugged underneath the blanket. “Maybe your lion just likes questions. It’d for sure be the right pick then, by a long shot.”

“Hm,” Pidge said again, and slid off of the top bunk. She crawled onto Lance’s with Green, settled back against the lion’s dark forest fur, and thought. 

_Green, this is Pidge, your… paladin, I guess. Can you hear me?_

Nothing.

_Green?_

Pidge crossed her arms and looked back. Green’s eyes were open, but they weren’t looking at her, they were looking out the back window of the truck at the slowly lightening landscape. In the farthest corner of Pidge’s vision, Shiro shifted on his bunk. He’d passed out again as soon as Coran and Allura took him into the truck, and the black lion had been standing vigil ever since. The black lion he’d introduced as Nova.

_Wait…_ Pidge thought. _What’s your name?_

The lion looked at her, and her piercing gaze shot right through Pidge’s mind, like a hacker with a computer file; everything on display.

_**What**_ **is** _**my name?**_

“Holy shit,” Pidge whispered. She could see and hear everything in one long blur, the lion’s memories, a man with dark skin and white hair like Allura, a deep, evil chuckle, a purple logo, a blue logo, intertwined. Everything the green lion had ever seen or heard, it raced past and around Pidge’s mind in a heartbeat, and she could feel her memories doing the same to the lion. “How’d you do that?”

_**We are connected, are we not?**_

Pidge sprawled back onto Green. She could feel her soft fur cushioning her, and she traced the bottom of the bunk with her eyes. "Can I call you Cookie? Would that be okay?"

_**Cookie?**_

"You know. For like, computer cookies. You’re in my system, you know what I’m about."

And then the lion laughed, a low rumble, a soft huff of warm breath onto Pidge’s face. 

_**Yes.**_

**HUNK**

This _sucked_.

Okay, the gigantic lions didn’t suck. And the truck that seemed way smaller on the outside than it was on the inside was pretty cool. And Lance’s face and subsequent freak-out when he learned Pidge was a girl was, in a word, hilarious. Okay, fine, _most of it_ didn’t suck. Hunk just couldn’t stop thinking about his dorm back at the Garrison, and his collection of Snapple caps, and the leftover rice he’d left in the community fridge. He was going to fry it up with soy sauce and pineapple and egg and maybe some steak, and now it was going to be some dumb college kid’s cold breakfast. _That_ sucked.

He yawned. It was probably around seven in the morning and he hadn't gotten more than an hour or so of sleep the previous night. He almost wished he could be like that guy a couple feet away from him, Shiro, and just pass out without questions from anyone else. 

He’d claimed the farthest corner of the truck, away from all the equipment and bunks, and made himself comfortable on the floor. Yellow, who, despite her name wasn’t yellow at all, but a vibrant, luminous gold, had joined him and put her head right in his lap. He didn’t have a lot of experience with cats, his parents back home had a dog and he’d always been more of a dog person, but as soon as he started stroking her head she’d replied with actual, legitimate _purring_. It was nice, so he kept doing it, and Yellow kept on purring.

She had a pattern down her back, lighter gold fur crackling down her spine like lightning. He traced it with one had as his other hand scratched behind her ears.

“Hey, dude,” he said softly, “we’re supposed to be friends, right?”

Yellow cracked open one deep brown eye and regarded him. That’s what was weird; Hunk _knew_ he should be scared of her. He’d seen nature documentaries, he’d seen _The Lion King_. Lions were predators, and lionesses were the scariest ones of all. But Yellow didn’t scare him, it was actually the opposite.

Somehow, in a truck, ages away from home, surrounded by lions, with one _in his lap_ , Hunk Garrett felt safe. Yellow purred more, if that was even possible.

_**I’ll always keep you safe.**_

“Whoa,” Hunk whispered. “Can you read my mind?”

_**We’re together now. We’re one and the same.**_

“Just like that?”

_**Just like that.**_

“Cool.” Hunk leaned back, the quietness of the truck (only broken by Lance having a hissed conversation with Pidge), the warmth of Yellow, and the soft rumbling in her chest actually lulling him to sleep. Hey, he’d had a long night. “Wait, Yellow?”

_**Is that what you want me to answer to?**_

“Well, that’s what I was gonna ask. I don’t think it fits you very well, can I give you a nickname?”

_**Give me a name, paladin.**_

“Well, first, my name’s Hunk,” he said. “And if we’re gonna be, I don’t know, _connected_ or whatever, I want you to like your name, you know? So, uh, what about Goldie?”

Yellow lifted one side of her upper lip in a disdainful sneer, showing one white canine tooth. Hunk shrugged.

“Or not. What about Pizza?”

She gave him a stare, an _are you kidding me?_ sort of stare that Hunk was only used to receiving from Pidge. He rolled his eyes.

“What? I’m hungry. Okay, what about _Strike_? You know, ‘cause your fur looks all lightning-ish on your back. Lightning strike, Strike, lion power?”

_**Hm. Strike.**_

“You like it?”

_**I love it.**_

“Sweet! Hunk and Strike, Strike and Hunk, saving the universe from all this nonsense—”

“Paladin?”

Hunk’s head shot up and he stopped mid-scratch. The red-headed man, the one Allura had introduced as Coran, was peering down at him. Strike butted his hand and he started scratching again.

“Can I have a seat?”

“Sure, man,” Hunk said, scooting over, and Strike moved slightly so there was room for Coran to sit, cross-legged, on the floor. “And my name’s Hunk, by the way. I’m still not sure about this whole _paladin_ thing.”

“Understandable,” Coran said. “It’s quite a transition. Have you been bonding with Yellow over here?”

“I think so,” Hunk replied. “And her name’s actually Strike, we, uh, agreed on it about five seconds ago.” Coran beamed.

“That’s wonderful! True bonding with a paladin and her lion is a beautiful thing to witness. How are you… Er…” Coran stopped, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand. “How are you holding up?”

“What, since I met a lion in the desert and got into some stranger’s truck?” Hunk asked. He was trying to be lighthearted about it, but it came out almost deadly serious. He raised his eyebrows and looked away from Coran’s intense stare, looking back down at Strike’s back and his dark fingers dug into her golden fur. This was insane.

_**You’re scared.**_

_No shit,_ Hunk thought back, keeping his eyes trained down on his hand, avoiding Coran. _Sorry. I’m just, I don’t know, I’m not the bravest person on a good day, and all this? All this is nuts._

_**We have each other now. You have me, I have you. We have our team.**_

_Some team. We’re missing two lions!_

_**My sisters are close. I can feel their energy. And your friends will find them, bond with them, and you’ll never be unsafe again.**_

Hunk looked up, at Lance sitting alone on Pidge’s bunk, at Keith on the floor beside Shiro’s. Lance was passed out, his head back against the wall, his mouth open in a silent snore. Keith was the opposite, awake and intense, his dark eyes burning a hole in the truck’s opposite wall. He hadn’t really met Keith until the desert, but Lance seemed to know him. Lance seemed to _hate_ him.

_Those two. Great._

Strike laughed, a vibrating rumble against Hunk’s leg. 

_**Wait until you meet their lions.**_

**SHIRO**

The worst part was that Shiro didn’t know if he was dreaming.

He could feel movement, like he was in a vehicle driving way over the speed limit, but he didn’t know where he was going. He could sense Nova, the heat from her fur and the quiet rumble in her throat, but he didn’t know where she was. The only other thing he knew, besides the movement and the lion, was Keith had found him.

He remembered the desert, Nova pacing a hole in the sand in front of him, the pain in his side, Keith screaming, him screaming, a woman with a cloud of white hair, and then nothing. He stayed, pinned to his back wherever he was, drifting in and out of consciousness, with the black lion beside him.

He’d heard Nova for the first time in the Galra prison. They called it a lab, but anywhere that he was kept, chained and experimented on, was a prison. That’s all he could remember, vague pain and blurry people in lab coats and a deep, commanding voice in his head. He thought he was going crazy, that this was another way that Galra was torturing him, but Nova was calm and steady. He couldn’t remember ever feeling steady.

She explained to him something wild, something involving the former Altea Tech company and a man named Alfor, who genetically engineered weapons for Galra. She was one of them, the leader, and he would never forget her next words, no matter how many times Galra put him under.

_**Stay strong. I’m coming for you.**_

He did stay strong, even as weeks turned to months. Everything that Galra did to him was blurry and inconsistent, except for Nova. He heard her roaring in his mind when they hurt him. He heard her soft voice when he was unconscious. He heard her, even when he couldn’t hear himself.

And one day, _yesterday_ , she kept her promise.

It was difficult. Shiro was exhausted from whatever torture Galra had put him through, and Nova was impatient and bristly. She’d yelled at him for the first time, when she broke his chains and he couldn’t stand upright, but quickly calmed down and slung him onto her back and made a run for it. 

Nova was a lion. He hadn’t realized, but it made sense. She was gigantic, a huge purple-eyed, black-furred lioness with a patch of white fur on her chest, and she was the best thing he’d ever seen. They ran, with Shiro’s hands wrapped in her fur and her gait low to the ground and swift as an arrow. Galra techs tried to fight back, but the only hit they managed to get was a shot that had grazed Shiro’s side. He shifted where he lay. It _stung_.

And then everything else. The desert, Keith, the white-haired girl, the other lions. 

Shiro’s eyes slowly opened. It was dark, but not dark enough that he couldn’t see. Someone had pulled the blinds across the only window he could see; there was one sliver of sunlight shining through. Nova was beside him, her bright eyes trained on him. He groaned.

“What the hell.”

_**You passed out. Again.**_

“I know,” Shiro said through gritted teeth. “What’s going on?”

_**We’re in a truck. Allura Altea was just here, she’s getting bandages for your side.**_

Shiro shifted. It was a bad idea. Bolts of pain shot through where he’d been shot and he groaned again. “Fucking hell, Nova.”

_**We’re safe, Takashi.**_

“I told you a million times. If I can call you Nova, you can call me Shiro.” His prosthetic was making buzzing noises, and underneath his arm itched. He wanted to take it off, but he could barely move his left arm without pain. “Who’s Allura Altea?”

_**Alfor Altea’s daughter.**_

“Hm.” Shiro didn’t know much about the founder of ATech, just that he’d built a tiny company and it had given Galra Corp a whole lot of trouble. And, of course, the lions. Allura must be the white-haired girl.

_**That little one’s been waiting there since you went unconscious.**_ Nova pushed his head to the side until he could see Keith, collapsed at the foot of the bunk he was laying on. His head was dipped so far down that his chin rested on his chest, as a shock of his dark hair flopped down over his eyes. It had been _two years_. 

He looked older. Tired half-moons smudged under his closed eyes, wrapped in a red jacket that Shiro didn’t remember. Keith was one of the kids at Garrison when Shiro had been in school, and he’d taken him under his wing and started teaching him small stuff, which eventually escalated to _everything he knew_. Shiro never saw Keith without a Garrison hoodie, but for some reason it had been replaced with a red jacket. He’d let his hair grow. Everything was different.

“That’s Keith,” he said quietly to Nova, watching the younger boy’s chest rise and fall. “He’s like my brother. I haven’t seen him in—”

_**Two years.**_ Nova finished. _**It hurts you.**_

“More than this wound,” Shiro admitted. Nova’s tail flicked across his face, and he managed a tight smile. “Thank you. For getting me out.”

_**You are my paladin. We belong together.**_

Shiro shifted again, and groaned again, as someone poked his shoulder. He turned his head, and came face-to-face with the girl Nova had called Allura. Half of her short white hair was tied up in a knot, and she was wearing a baggy sweatshirt and black pants tucked into boots. She had an armful of medical equipment, and he immediately turned onto his side and let his wound scream into the open air.

He bit his lip to keep from yelling out.

“Good morning,” Allura said, crouching down. Her accent was light and calming. “I know you probably don’t want to talk. My name’s Allura, and if you keep still I”ll have you fixed in just a tic.”

“I’m Shiro,” he managed to get out as she sprayed something on the wound. Nova laid one leg across both of his to keep him from wiggling as Allura cleaned his side. “Thanks.”

“I’m the Keeper of Lions,” she replied like it was nothing. “It’s my duty.”

“Well that makes perfect sense,” Shiro muttered. Nova flicked her tail across his nose and, as he watched, Allura bit her lip to keep back the rest of a grin.

“You and Black are pretty close already.”

“She saved my life,” Shiro said as Allura smeared something else on his side and put a giant bandage on directly after. The gel stung, and then it cooled, and Shiro felt himself relaxing. “And her name’s Nova.”

“Nova and Shiro,” Allura said, musing as she packed the rest of the equipment into a bag. “Well met.”

She left him, moving back across the truck in the near darkness. He couldn’t see much else; the golden lion was curled in a corner with another boy who looked to be around Keith’s age, and, as the gel continued to cool his side, Shiro felt his eyes get heavy. 

At the end of the bunk, Keith shifted, and Shiro closed his eyes before he could see that he was awake. Lifting one eyelid the slightest amount, Shiro watched as Keith regarded him, his arms crossed like normal, his dark eyes brimming with emotion. Pain, gratitude, fear. Shiro wanted to hug him, but he stayed still.

Keith put one hand on Shiro’s shoulder, opened his mouth like he was going to say something and then snapped it shut like he thought better of it. Turning away sharply, Keith grabbed the ladder to the bunk above Shiro’s and climbed it without a word.

Nova curled closer to Shiro. _**Isn’t he a complicated one.**_

He huffed out a quiet laugh. “Keith? Yeah, you don’t know the half of it.”

_**You should sleep, Takas— Shiro. I’ll watch out for you.**_

“Thanks, Nova.” Shiro moved, detaching his prosthetic with practiced ease, slipping it between him and the lion. He stretched slightly; freedom was different, and it was going to take a while for him to get used to it. The road rumbled beneath him as he closed his eyes and, finally, let sleep claim him. 

The truck ate miles as five paladins slept. Pidge curled against Cookie and dreamed of her family, her fists clenched and her teeth bared. Hunk leaned back on Strike and, lulled by her steady breathing, dreamed about the future. Lance, with his arms stretched out under his head, dreamed restlessly of blue skies and open water. Keith, on the bunk above, pressed his eyes shut and dreamed about a dark prison and what was trapped inside. 

And if Shiro dreamed, he didn’t remember any of it when the morning came.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 5 will be updated on 3/26!
> 
> Thanks for reading! Comments/kudos are immensely appreciated, and you can always find me to yell about paladin-related things at fihli.tumblr.com!
> 
> -Gab


	5. Like A Bullet Needs A Target

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Paladin introductions, and Blue.

**LANCE**

Lance woke up a few hours later because a lion licked his face.

“God!” He shot up in bed, the right side of his face all wet, and glared at Hunk, who was snickering. “Can you keep your gigantic murder cat under control for like, I don’t know, _five seconds?_ ”

“Sorry buddy.” Hunk shrugged, and the yellow lion swatted at Lance’s shoulder with one enormous paw before jumping off of the top bunk. He must’ve fallen asleep before Pidge was finished hiding out on the bed below that he’d claimed the night before. “I think we’re having a team meeting or something. Strike was only trying to help.”

“Strike?” Lance swung off of the bunk and landed without falling on his face. It _did_ look like they were about to have a meeting; Keith was sitting on top of the other bunk with his legs dangling in front of Pidge and the green lion, who were curled together under him. Shiro — _Takashi Shirogane,_ motherfucking hell— was sitting on the floor, his back against the big black lion. Hunk was next to him, and then the girl from the desert, the cute one who said her name was Allura.

“That’s her name,” Hunk replied. The lion —Strike— growled in agreement, before nudging Lance closer to the group. 

“Join us, Lance,” Allura said, gesturing to the spot next to her. “We all have a lot to discuss. Coran’s driving, but I’ll fill him in later.”

She really was beautiful, Lance thought, even with her short hair half-up and dark circles under her eyes from a night in the desert. She looked fierce, resilient, like she could kick his ass. He’d probably thank her.

“I’d join you anywhere,” he said, waggling his eyebrows before taking a seat. Allura rolled her eyes, and from the top bunk, so did Keith.

“Typical,” he muttered.

“What?” Lance shot back. “I thought you didn’t _know me_.”

“I’d know your type anywhere.”

Lance smirked. He couldn’t help it. “Tall, dark, and handsome?”

Keith rolled his eyes again, quick and vicious, like even that small movement was designed to cut him in half. “More like a fucking serial monogamist.”

“Keith,” Shiro said warningly.

“Yeah, _Keith_ ,” Lance said, taunting, moving until he was sitting cross-legged and making a mental note to look up whatever a serial monogamist was later, “listen to your dad.”

“You shut the fuck up,” Shiro returned, rather blandly, before looking at Allura. “Tell us what we need to know.”

Allura cleared her throat as Lance tried to mask how much five dismissive words from Shiro had immediately stabbed him where they landed. He caught Hunk’s concerned eye from across the room.

“You okay?” Hunk mouthed. Lance lifted and dropped one shoulder and slipped his phone out of the pocket of his jeans.

**large**

LM: idk man

HG: Isn’t Shiro like, your hero?

HG: I don’t know, you were always really interested when he came up in class discussions and stuff

LM: ugh shut up man i don’t want to talk about it

HG: ……..You sure?

LM: yay my hero told me to stfu today let’s move along

“Are you paying attention?” Allura asked, and Lance started. She was staring at him, her otherworldly blue eyes boring straight into his soul. He fumbled and dropped his phone. “This is _important_ , paladin, you’re never going to bond with your lion if you don’t listen to me! And I—”

“Okay, could everyone just chill?” Pidge sat up on the bunk and so did the green lion, keeping her deep emerald eyes trained protectively on Pidge. “You can’t keep us in this truck and then yell at us when we’re not living up to your _standards_ , or whatever!”

“I am trying to _help_ —” 

“Yelling at Lance isn’t helping anyone,” Hunk said, and turned to Shiro. “And I know you don’t give a shit about the rest of us compared to Keith, but could you just—”

“Oh God, get over yourself,” Keith drawled from the top bunk. 

Pidge slammed the bottom of the bed with the heel of her hand. “You get over yourself, you shithead!”

“Whoa!” Shiro said. “Let’s all just calm down, okay?”

“See?” Hunk said, and flung his arms in Shiro’s direction. “And you want him to be our _leader?_ ”

“He’s the black paladin,” Allura said loudly. “He _is_ your leader, it’s his right.”

“Because some wacky lion said so?” Pidge asked. Nova turned. Pidge raised her hands in surrender. “I mean, Nova’s great.”

“Leader of what?” Lance asked, finally finding his voice. He could feel Keith’s glare all the way across the truck.

“Voltron, you idiot.”

Hunk grabbed a handful of pens from the desk behind him and flung them at Keith. They exploded, scattering everywhere, and Keith leapt off of the bed right at Hunk. Strike growled, pushing Keith away with one huge paw, and moving to stand in front of Hunk.

“Call your attack dog off!” Keith yelled, lunging again and meeting only Strike’s wall of golden fur. Lance laughed, and so did Hunk.

“She’s a cat, you asshole!”

“Hunk, Keith,” Shiro said. “Come on.”

“ _Hunk, Keith, come on,_ ” Pidge mocked from the bunk, behind the green lion. Nova narrowed her eyes at Pidge, and Pidge narrowed her eyes right back. 

“Paladins!” Allura yelled, getting to her feet and taking a deep breath in. The lights in the truck dimmed, and Lance felt them speed up. Coran poked his head through the driver’s cab window.

“Uh, I can’t slow down! Allura? Allura!”

“I power this vehicle,” Allura said, and, deep in her forearms, underneath her dark skin, a vibrant blue glow pulsed, the same color that ran through the wires of the truck. “My father and I built it from the ground up, and _you will listen to me_.”

The truck gained speed. Lance held onto the bunk Pidge was sitting on, it was bolted to the ground and he was honestly scared that he’d roll right into Shiro if he wasn’t latched onto something. Keith stumbled back into Strike, who planted her paws firm. Hunk was holding onto her leg.

“Allura!” Shiro yelled. The humming of the truck and the screaming landscape was almost too much. Lance was pretty sure they’d gotten on every cop’s radar for the next twenty miles. “Please!”

“Sit down,” she commanded, pointing at Keith. He sank to the ground right there next to Strike. The truck slowed until Lance felt comfortable letting go of the bunk. They were all breathing heavily like they’d just run a marathon, except for Allura. She swept a cold eye over all of them.

“You are paladins of Voltron now,” she said. “Your lions claimed you, which means they claimed you _as a team_. Now, are you ready to listen?”

Shiro nodded, and so did Keith, and so did Hunk. Pidge made a noncommittal noise from behind Green, and Lance crossed his legs again. 

“Shoot, princess.”

Allura turned to him. The blue glow was gone, and she looked like she’d seen a ghost.

“Why did you call me that?”

“Because he’s a dick,” Keith muttered. Strike slapped him with her tail.

Lance shrugged. “I don’t know? I won’t do it again if it bothers you.”

“Don’t do it again,” she agreed, took a deep breath, and faced the group again. “My father was an engineer for our family’s company, Altea Technology. We were small, but good at what we did. Galra Corp thought so, too.”

She told them about Alfor Altea, her father, and his genius. How he loved genetics, figuring out what made creatures work, and how to fix them, painlessly and humanely, to make them better. She told them about how their entire company was raided by Galra Corp, how Alfor was forced to experiment on bigger and bigger creatures, how they were working up to humans. How she grew up in a lab, how as soon as she turned eighteen she started working on the truck with her father, building the mainframe and the intelligence into her own body. 

And then, the lions. How Galra took five cubs away from their home and gave them to Alfor as a gift and a threat, how it was his final challenge, make these beings into superweapons or die trying. He raised them, he built them, and he died, his final rebellion, going out in a blaze of glory with the information safe in the mind of his only child. 

Allura told about her escape, how she fought her way out of Galra Corp with Coran, two lions, and the truck. She told the story quickly, with a few short glances to the cab of the truck where Coran was holed up, driving. Lance didn’t know what he was to her —uncle? One of her dad’s colleagues?— and she didn’t offer any explanation. After she was done, she took a deep, heavy breath in and out.

“The lions chose you,” she repeated. “I don’t know how, and I don’t know why. My father didn’t create them for evil. He didn’t get murdered by Galra for me to sit back and die, too.”

She crossed her arms like she said too much, and Lance looked around the room. Everyone else was sitting in varying states of shock. Hunk looked nervous, Keith looked angry, and Pidge looked confused, which wasn’t normal. Shiro just looked sad. It was a soft, vulnerable emotion, and, heroes be damned, it wasn’t something Lance was expecting from him.

“What do we do?” Shiro asked quietly. Allura’s fists clenched and she squeezed her eyes shut for a heartbeat.

“I don’t know.”

“We have to get the other lions, right?” Keith said, his voice rough and deep. “We start there.”

“Agreed,” Lance heard himself say. Keith looked at him, his eyes wide and shocked for a half-second before reverting to his usual grumpy expression. “Let’s start with Blue, though, you know, ‘cause I call it.”

“What, saving the best for last?” Keith asked smugly, raising one eyebrow. Lance rolled his eyes.

“In your dreams, Kogane.”

Pidge laughed. “You dickwads don’t even know what lions you have yet.”

Allura sat back down next to Lance, stretching her legs out and putting her arms behind her to prop herself up. She yawned, and Lance immediately wondered when the last time she slept was. 

“That reminds me,” she started. “I know those with lions already have started bonding, but there are a few things you need to know.” She looked over at Shiro and Nova. “The black lion is calm and collected. She is a natural leader, and so is her paladin. Shiro, would you like to introduce yourself?”

“Oh my god, this is so awkward,” Hunk said, and Strike pushed his shoulder with one paw. Shiro rubbed the back of his neck.

“Uh, sure? I’m Shiro, this is Nova—”

“Hi, Shiro,” Lance droned. “Hi, Nova.”

He only saw it out of the corner of his eye, but he’d later swear he saw Keith’s mouth twitch upward, just for a second.

“—I’m a Garrison graduate,” Shiro went on like Lance had never interrupted, “and I was working with the school before I was taken by Galra.” On her bunk, Pidge twitched. “I don’t really remember anything about it, but it wasn’t great. They took my hand.”

He clenched his right fist, and the metal prosthetic whirred.

“That’s where I met Nova. Um, or where she talked to me in my mind for the first time. I had no idea she was a lion, or even what she was, until she rescued me yesterday.”

Nova curled closer to Shiro, resting her chin on the top of his head, wrinkling her nose when his shock of white hair brushed it.

Lance’s chest tightened. He was jealous, he knew that, he felt it. Jealous of Shiro, of Hunk, of Pidge. Of the fact that they were cemented in this craziness already, that they had lions, that they were _paladins_. That it was definite. That they had a place on the team. He glanced over at Keith, who was looking at Shiro with a blank, unreadable expression. Lance had no doubt that he felt the same way.

_Hey, Blue?_ he thought. _You out there, buddy? Come on, I really want to meet you. I want to hang out. We’re connected, right?_

Nothing. He picked at a hangnail and tried not to look disappointed. 

“Next?” Allura asked, looking beside Shiro at Hunk and Strike. Hunk shrugged.

“Uh, yeah, I’m Hunk Garrett, and this is Strike.” The yellow lion’s tail whipped back and forth. “I was training as an engineer at Garrison, um, and this is still nuts.”

“The yellow lion, _Strike_ ,” Allura went on, “is powerful and strong, and so is her paladin. She is also often the most reasonable of her sisters, and is friendly and kind.” Strike dipped her head respectfully in Allura’s direction, and she did the same. 

“The green lion,” she continued. Pidge perked up.

“Her name’s Cookie.”

“Seriously?” Lance asked. Cookie growled, and he threw his hands up in surrender. “I mean, it’s the best name ever!”

“She is inquisitive and brilliant,” Allura said. “Much like what I’ve seen of her paladin thus far. She is quick on her feet, and a dirty fighter.”

“Oh, God, Pidge got a _brawling lion?_ ” Lance asked. “Please tell her she’s not allowed to pick fights with me anymore.”

“Our fight is with Galra,” Allura shot back. “Pidge, please introduce yourself to the group.”

“You did a pretty good job,” Pidge said. “I’m Pidge Gunderson, this is Cookie the lion, and we’re both hella smart.” Cookie growled in agreement, and Allura glanced briefly at the truck’s ceiling. 

“While we don’t know which lion is going to bond with who, I can make a pretty educated guess,” she continued, looking over at Keith. “The red lion is fiery and temperamental. She was taken by Galra to a hidden location because of her frequent bursts of fury. She is by far the fastest of her sisters, and will rely on her paladin for not only skill, but instinct, which is why I believe she will bond the best with—” She gestured at Keith, who shifted uncomfortably.

“I’m Keith, uh, Kogane. I don’t have a lion.”

“Hey, and _I_ have skill,” Lance interrupted. “ _And_ instinct. Maybe Red’ll bond with _me_.”

“The blue lion,” Allura pushed forward like neither of them had spoken, “is a free spirit. She is enthusiastic and bold, and she never, ever listens to me.”

She shot Lance a look, and he grinned.

“That’s my girl.”

“I thought you wanted to bond with Red,” Keith said, crossing his arms. 

Lance turned his brilliant grin on Keith. “Nah. Sorry man, Blue’s with me.”

Keith rolled his eyes and Allura gave him another look.

“And you are?”

“Lance McClain,” he said, addressing the group and shooting one finger gun at Hunk, who returned with a lazy salute. “Future fighter pilot, sharpshooter extraordinaire—”

“And oh so very humble,” Pidge finished. He gave her the double-guns.

“That’s me.”

“Brilliant,” Allura said. “There you have it. Five paladins, and soon to be five lions—”

**_PALADIN!_**

Lance yelled out at the same time Keith did, and clapped both hands over his ears. The entirety of space had just slammed into his brain like a freight train, and the roaring in his ears was nothing compared to the hammer-on-steel throbbing in his mind. Through slitted eyes he saw Keith in the same position as he was, kneeling on the ground, arms over his head. 

“What is it?” Shiro’s hand was on his shoulder suddenly and he recoiled at the touch, rocking back and forth. Allura was beside Keith, and Hunk and Pidge were on his other side.

“It’s Blue,” he said, “or, I mean, I’m pretty sure it is. She just _yelled_ at me!”

From across the truck, he heard Keith moan.

“Red, she’s… She’s in trouble, I don’t know what it is, she just—”

“We got incoming!” Coran yelled from the cab. Lance closed his eyes but he could still see; the desert stretched out in front of paws pounding sand, a brilliant golden orange sunset, a swiftly approaching truck. _Them_.

“Stop the truck!” he yelled. “The incoming, it’s her, it’s Blue!”

Allura tilted her head back and Lance felt the truck begin to slow, the wheels spitting up sand underneath them. He shot out from under Shiro’s hand, flung open the back doors, and slid down the ladder until he felt desert underneath his sneakers. He was vaguely aware of everyone behind him as he rounded the side of the truck, hand over his eyes to block the slowly lowering sun as he scanned the horizon.

“BLUE!” he yelled. “I’M OVER HERE!”

And suddenly, _there_ , a cloud, a form, a bunch of contracting and retracting muscles that made up a huge lioness, dark fur rippling like an ocean in a storm as she raced across the desert. He could feel her even when she was far away, like a tug in his heart, like a twitch in his restless fingers, like power massing behind his eyes. 

In a heartbeat she had reached them. There was no one else there, just Lance and a lion alone under a darkening sky. He laughed as she slowed down, a loud, ringing noise that she responded to with a roar, a sonic-boom of recognition that swept through his hair and rung in his ears. It was her, and she was his, and he was home.

Blue ran straight into him, pushing him to the ground and rasping a long pink tongue up the right side of his face. She pressed her forehead to his.

_**I’m here.**_

“I know!” He laughed again. “What took you so long?”

_**My sister… She is in trouble. I need you**_

“Red? Yeah, Keith said— oh shit!” He scrambled to his feet and swung around to face the rest of the group, who were standing, a little dumbstruck, by the cab. “Uh, guys, I think Blue has an idea where Galra took Red.”

“Yeah?” Keith approached them. “Well, where do we go?”

_**We cannot all go.**_ Blue turned her deep sea eyes on Lance, and he cocked his head. _**It’s a small space, they will know if I lead you all there.**_

“She said we can’t all go,” Lance said. “She knows where Red is, but it’ll be way too conspicuous if we drive a huge-ass truck to their doorstep.”

“Eloquent,” Keith said.

“I was paraphrasing,” Lance shot back.

Allura mused on this for a second, with her hand on her chin. “Okay, well, let’s get you two suited up, I suppose.”

“Wait, _us?_ ” Keith said. “Can’t I go with Shiro? Or, like, anyone else?”

“Lance is the blue lion’s paladin,” Allura said. “If she is to lead you to the red lion, Lance will go with her.”

“Hell yeah, son,” Lance said, and held out his fist to Blue to bump. She just looked at it. “We’ll work on that.”

Keith groaned. “Holy shit.”

He followed Allura and the rest of the group back to the truck, and Lance leaned closer to the radiant warmth of a lion— of _his_ lion. “Welcome to the squad, Blue.”

_**Is that my name?**_

Lance hummed in confusion. Pidge had given her lion a new name, and so had Hunk, and he supposed Shiro had, as well. “I don’t know, do you like Blue? It’s kind of how I’ve been referring to you in my mind and all that, but—”

_**I am pretty blue.**_

“Oh my god, that was a joke, wasn’t it?” Lance nudged her with his shoulder and she pushed back, almost making him fall in the sand. “Okay, _Blue_ , you really did it now!”

_**Blue and Lance.**_

“Lance and Blue,” he returned, like a mantra, and together they watched the sun set.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Comments/kudos are immensely appreciated, and you can always find me to yell about paladin-related things at fihli.tumblr.com!
> 
> -Gab


	6. Fire At Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith, Lance, and Blue head towards the Galra Corp facility.

**KEITH**

Keith scuffed up desert sand with his shoe and thought, not for the first time, about faking his death to get out of something.

Lance’s lion, the one the color of the Atlantic that he had introduced, rather aptly, as _Blue_ , was hunkered down beside the truck as Allura fitted armor over Lance’s shoulders. She'd helped him with his not five minutes ago, and the weight was comfortably distributed across his back. The armor was a bulletproof vest type of thing —dark red with wide white Vs across the back and front— along with thicker ridges on the shoulders and a stiff collar that clicked with the helmet she had handed him. She'd also given him a long sleeved water wicking shirt to wear underneath and a pair of black pants with thick moto padding on the knees. 

There had been an offer of boots, but Keith insisted on keeping his own. They were already worn in, and, if he was honest with himself, he already felt like he was being sucked into someone else's story, someone else's life.

The clothes fit him, but he couldn't shake the feeling of Allura tightening the shoulder pads, of her adjusting the breastplate. It wasn't his armor, it had belonged to someone before him. He didn't even have a _lion_ yet— what if this was all some sort of joke? What if he was just kidding himself?

“Defender of the universe,” he muttered, taking the helmet off and tucking it under his arm. “Keith fucking Kogane. Yeah, right.”

The red lion rumbled in his ear. It was constant, now, ever since Blue had shown up. He couldn't tell if she was agreeing or disagreeing with him. 

“I guess we'll find out,” he said. Another growl. 

“Hey,” Lance called across the sand dividing them, “are you coming or what?”

Keith nodded, bending down to brush dirt off of the toe of his boot, effectively hiding an extended eye roll. Allura had to understand this was a bad idea; he hadn't even known Lance for a day and they were already on bad terms. He’d rushed Strike to get at Hunk; he’d attacked _an actual lion_ because Hunk was on Lance’s side. Not because Hunk was annoying him, not because he really had any reason to fight anyway, but because Hunk and Lance and the other one, Pidge, came as a set. They belonged together.

Keith didn’t belong anywhere.

He stood up, rolling his shoulders back and hearing the muscles scream. He hadn’t slept very well, hadn’t slept at all, really, he’d been worrying about Shiro, and worrying about three lions in a confined space with him, and worrying about his bike, now stashed in a storage unit on top of the truck. Really, though, that hadn’t changed since the shack, Keith worrying about three things above all. Shiro, safety, and the bike. That’s all he really knew.

“You ready to get this show on the road?” Lance asked as Keith made his slow, systematic way over to where he and Blue were standing. While not as big as Nova or even Strike, Blue was still intimidatingly huge, standing with her tail wrapped protectively around Lance’s leg and her eyes trained right on Keith. 

He almost couldn’t even believe this all was happening; the desert, the truck, the _lions_. That in a few hours he might be in the same position as Lance, standing with the red lion, looking like he could conquer the world.

“Allura said to give her a second,” Lance said as Keith resisted the urge to scuff his heel against the sand again. “She’s grabbing something from the truck.”

“Okay,” he replied, keeping his voice civil. This was fine, he could make this work. Spend some time with Lance, get to his lion wherever Galra was keeping her, be back before either one of them thought about killing the other. It would be fine.

Lance butted Blue with his shoulder and he spluttered. “Oh my god, shut up!”

“What did she say?” Keith asked.

“None of your business,” Lance shot back, and Blue swatted him with her tail. “She said your emo haircut is dumb.”

Blue hit him again, and Keith rolled his eyes. So much for fine.

“Glad this is going to be a fun trip.”

“Paladins,” Allura said, rounding the truck with a box in her arms, closely followed by Shiro, Pidge, Hunk, and the other three lions. “I have one more thing for you. It goes along with your armor, and it goes along with your lions.”

“For those of us who _have_ lions,” Lance said. Keith rounded on him.

“And if we _don’t_ get my lion, you know who I get to blame?”

“Guys, can we just calm down?” Shiro asked, holding out his arms to receive the box. Allura adjusted it and flipped it open, and Shiro held the lid open with his chin.

Lance stuck his tongue out at Keith, and Keith flipped him off.

_You’d better be really easy to free,_ he thought quickly, hoping the red lion could hear him. _If I have to spend more time than necessary with this idiot, you owe me. Big time._

“Hunk,” Allura said, picking out a curved white and yellow thing that looked like it would fit perfectly in Hunk’s grip, “this is your bayard. If you need a weapon, tap it against that port on your armor.”

She pointed to his right leg, at a tiny glowing circle that matched the one on the bottom of his bayard. He took the weapon and did as she instructed, tapping it against his leg.

“Fuck!” He jumped back, dropping his bayard in the sand. “It was like, humming or something!”

Allura laughed as, on the ground, the bayard unfolded, whirring and coming apart like a mechanized origami swan. In a heartbeat it wasn’t curved and small anymore, but a huge shoulder cannon that Hunk immediately hefted like it weighed nothing, grinning.

“Sweet!” Lance said. “Does mine do that, too?”

“They’re different for each paladin,” Allura said, and handed Lance his blue bayard. “See for yourself.”

Lance tapped it against his leg and held onto it as it transformed, becoming a sleek blaster gun that he lifted and pointed at a cactus far away from the group. He shot a soundless blue blast at it, and it exploded. 

“Okay, this is fuckin’ awesome.”

“Pidge,” Allura said, handing her a green one, which changed into a glowing green knuckle sheath, crackling with electricity. And then Allura took the last one out of the box, a red and white bayard that she held out to Keith.

He took it, hefting it in his hand before tapping it against the port on his leg. He understood why Hunk had dropped his; it started _vibrating_ , like he’d stuck his finger in a live socket, and as he watched, it unfolded into his weapon.

It was a sword, heavy in his hand, three and a half, maybe four feet of tempered white metal, glowing red in the dusky night. He grinned. He couldn’t help it.

“All right.”

“Doesn’t Shiro get one?” Pidge asked, tapping her bayard again and stowing it using the holster on her armor. Allura shook her head and closed the box.

“The black bayard was lost to Galra,” she said, looking at Shiro almost sadly. “I apologize.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Shiro said, “I’ll manage.” Keith watched as he clenched his fist, the mechanical Galra Tech one. It looked shiny, almost purple, but Keith squeezed his eyes shut for a second and the purple illusion disappeared. 

He tapped the sword’s hilt against his leg and it folded back in on itself, back into bayard shape. That was cool, that was almost worth not having a lion yet. At least he had a weapon, a gigantic _sword_ that looked like it could cut through steel. And Lance had that gun, and he’d been able to blow up a cactus from hundreds of feet away. Keith, however begrudgingly, had to admit that was cool, too, not that he’d ever tell Lance that. 

“Good luck,” Allura said, Keith realized, to him. She walked over, and placed one hand on his shoulder. “Connect with Red, and she’ll protect you with her life. Connect with her, and there’s no way you’ll do anything but survive.”

“I’m not afraid,” Keith heard himself say. (Heard himself _lie_.)

“You’re about to infiltrate a Galra base,” Allura replied. “Fear is expected.”

“Our helmets have communication,” Shiro said, and Keith fitted his over his head as Lance did the same. “Let us know if anything goes wrong, and tell us as soon as you have Red. I believe in you two.”

Hunk lifted Lance up in a giant hug as Shiro patted Keith on the back. He resisted the urge to lean into the older man, after Hunk’s accusation to Shiro of favoritism, he didn’t want to get him into any more hot water. He wasn’t Keith, Shiro’s surrogate younger brother anymore, he was Keith, red paladin, under a leader that was expected to look out for everyone.

Blue hunkered down enough for Lance to clamber up onto her back, and Lance held out one blue-gloved hand for Keith. He hesitated, and Lance noticed.

“C’mon, she doesn’t bite,” he said, and Keith lunged up to grab Lance’s forearm, pulling himself up onto Blue’s back behind him. Blue stood, and everyone seemed to shrink; he was eons away from the ground, ages gone from safety. She hunched, and he fell forward into Lance’s back.

“ _God,_ fuck, what am I supposed to hold onto?” he said through clenched teeth. Lance laughed, and Keith immediately wanted to test out his new bayard.

“Me,” he said, and nudged Blue with his heels. She shot forward. “To Red!”

Keith tried to hold onto Blue’s fur instead, but the constant jolting of her gait, speeding across the desert —almost as fast or just as fast as the truck— made it almost impossible. After the fifth time he almost fell off and met a swift and painful desert-sand-in-the-face death, he grimaced and gingerly wrapped his arms around Lance’s waist. 

He felt, rather than heard, the other boy laugh, and then his voice crackled in his ear.

“How’s it goin’ back there, Kogane?”

“Shut up,” Keith shot back. “Uh, I don’t even know your last name.”

“I definitely told you back there.”

“And I definitely forgot.”

“ _Wow_ , memory of a goldfish, much?” Lance paused. “It’s McClain. Don’t make me tell you again, okay? If you’re gonna be my nemesis, you gotta remember my last name.”

“I thought Galra was supposed to be our nemesis,” Keith said.

“You can have more than one,” Lance replied, and Blue swerved sharply to the right, making Keith curl his arms around Lance’s armored chest a little tighter. “Okay, okay, I’ll tell him.”

“Tell me what?” Keith asked.

“We’re coming up on the facility,” Lance said, and his voice was sharper, pointed and commanding. “Blue says to get ready. You’re going through a duct, and we’re going to cover your ass.”

“A _duct?_ ”

“Yeah. We’ll get you in, but once you’re in you gotta find Red on your own.”

“By myse—” Keith started, but snapped his mouth shut. He wasn’t showing weakness, especially not to Lance. “Okay. Just get me to the duct.”

“Roger that,” Lance said, and their comm link fizzled closed. They both bent down on Blue’s back, and she even seemed to get lower, belly brushing the desert floor as they ran through the night. Keith glanced up once, got a glimpse of a wall looming over them, and then Lance yelled.

“HOLD ON!”

Keith barely had time to tighten his grip before Blue jumped, clearing the wall in one leap and landing gracefully on the other side, She took off once again, zig-zagging through the courtyard and keeping her head down. They reached the side of the building and she hooked her claws across a mesh panel, ripping it off and revealing a square of space that Keith was going to have to squeeze through. He slipped off of Blue’s back, unhooking the top part of his armor and handing it up to Lance.

“There’s no way I’m going to fit through there with those shoulders,” he said, and tossed his helmet up, too. “Or a big head.”

“The comm link?” Lance asked. Keith shook his head.

“I’m either getting out of here with the red lion, or not getting out at all.”

“Wait, Keith, I think we—” Lance started, but Keith dove for the duct, pushing his way through with his elbows and his feet, feeling the bayard knock against his thigh as he crawled. Lance had called him _Keith_ , he thought. Not his last name, not some insult. It was probably pre-mission jitters. 

_Red,_ he called out as he wiggled through the duct. _Come on, I’m here. In the same building as you. We gotta get out of here, Blue’s here, and everyone else is waiting for us—_

He reached the end, and through the mesh grate he saw nothing but a dark, empty hallway. No lion, no Galra employees, nothing but dim halogen lights. He punched the grate out and pushed his way through, replacing it as best as he could in the low light.

He was hoping that once he got close to the facility, Red would’ve spoken to him again. He’d gotten nothing since the command in the desert, _find me_. Figured he would get the least talkative lion of them all.

_Okay,_ he tried again as he took off, running through the halls, hoping that he was avoiding most of the probable security cameras. _I’m here, I want to save you, you gotta work with me!_

He skidded around a corner, saw the grate he’d ruined, and threw his head back, letting a groan loose towards the ceiling.

“You gotta be kidding me!”

And then he felt it. Almost like his bayard transforming; a vibrating in his limbs that drew him onward. There was nothing he could do but follow its pull, turning corners and hiding from guards when they’d head towards him, their heavy footfalls alerting him to their presence before he could be detected. He knew his strengths; knew he was quick and agile, knew that he could blend in well with the shadows as long as he stood still. It helped him at Garrison, and it helped him now.

He followed the pull until it led him to a pair of huge double doors, closed and protected by a hand scanner. He swore to himself, and wheeled back around to the last place he remembered seeing a guard. Pulling out his bayard, he tapped it against the port and stepped out behind the guard, ramming the hilt onto the back of his helmeted head and catching him as he crumpled to the ground. 

“Fucking… lions,” he grunted, dragging the guard behind him to the doors. “Fucking truck, fucking... Altea Tech...”

The guard’s purple gloved hand scanned easily enough, and the doors slid open. 

Keith saw her, and his vision tunneled. He forgot everything else. _Red._

“Hey!” He ran up to her. They were kept apart by a cage, shimmering beams of hot energy acting as bars. “Wake up, Red, we gotta go!”

She was curled in on herself, a giant lioness with flaming fur, shimmering in the light from the bars. Keith kicked the metal bottom of the cage, and she still didn’t move.

“It’s me,” he yelled, “Keith! I’m your paladin! _Supposedly!_ ”

The door behind him shuddered, and started to slide open. Keith saw one glimpse of the mess of masked Galra guards on the other side, and slammed the control panel next to the cage. Nothing happened, and Red didn’t move. 

“For the fucking love of shit,” Keith said, and his bayard was out.

The first wave of guards came at him, and he ducked and parried, swinging his sword in wide arcs like his life depended on it. It felt like an extension of his arm, an extension of his very being. It felt _good_.

Guards fell, piled on top of each other, and they still came.

A drop of sweat finally started on Keith’s forehead, and it rolled down his nose as he blocked another attack. He sucked in a heavy breath as he ducked and rolled and came up swinging. This was never going to end; they must have sent the entire facility’s force of guards down to the cage. He was never getting out of this, he was never—

And then his bayard was out of his hands, skittering back down the hall in a harmless boomerang shape, and his arms were wrenched behind his back and he was yelling, yelling wordless screams of terror as a guard threaded gloved fingers into his hair and pulled back sharply, forcing him to his knees—

And then a booming roar cut through the mayhem, undercut with a shriek of pain as the room filled with the acrid smell of burning hair, and the pressure on Keith’s back ended, and he was hauled to his feet by the nape of his neck—

“Red,” he breathed, and her forehead was on his and, for a moment, he felt like he belonged.

**_Do you trust me?_** she asked. Keith looked up. Her fur was burnt; she’d leapt through the fiery bars for him, she’d fought the guards for him, she had eyes that looked like the center of the earth and her ears were lowered for war. He stood.

“Let's do this.”

She bent down, he jumped on her back, and they were off. Down the hall, past more guards. She scooped the bayard up with her nose and tossed it back where he snatched it out of the air, making it a sword again and hacking and swinging wherever he could. He didn’t know how they were going to make it out, he only knew that there was a firestorm in his soul and she was only fanning the inferno. 

_Can I call you something other than Red?_ he thought as they demolished another battalion of guards. She roared, and more guards went running.

_**Depends, paladin. Is it a good name?**_

_What about Inferno?_

She laughed, and it was a deep rumble that hit Keith right in his heart. 

_**I like it. I can even shorten it to Fern, you know. For posterity.**_

_That’s a little soft, don’t you think?_ Keith asked. She headbutted a guard and he went right through the tiles of the ceiling.

_**So am I.**_

It was Keith’s turn to laugh. _Sure._

She looked back on him with one eye as hot as coal. **_I think, Keith Kogane, that you are, too._**

There was no more time for talking. More and more guards were on them, and Keith swung his sword and Fern let out roar after roar as they ran for the exit. They burst out a door and there were Lance and Blue, holding their own against another group of guards.

“Lance!” Keith yelled, holding his sword high.

“Hey, Blue, there they are!” Lance shot one blast into the air, and the four of them turned as one unit and raced for the wall. Fern nudged Blue with her shoulder and Blue pushed back, both lions in sync and perfectly content. They flew over the wall, clearing it in one leap, and in a heartbeat the Galra facility was nothing more than a badly-lit memory. The desert sped by as Keith returned his bayard to his belt, hunkering down on Fern’s back and threading his gloved fingers through her fur, tight and secure.

He glanced over at Lance, who held up his red helmet. He lifted his arms, catching it and fitting it over his head.

“How’d it go?” Lance asked through their comm link. He looked kind of concerned, and Keith realized it was probably because of a few nasty looking cuts on his arms, and the way Fern’s fur was still smoking vaguely, and, he noticed as he brushed one hand across his cheek, his face was bleeding. 

“I’m fine,” he replied. “We’re fine.”

“You and Red were kicking ass back there,” he said. “We heard you all the way outside. Of course, we had our own ass to kick…”

“Thank you,” Keith said, “for that. We wouldn’t have gotten away if you hadn’t taken half the guards on by yourselves.”

“No problem,” Lance said, and his voice was quiet. “Anytime.”

They ran on through the desert, into the dark morning, and Keith bent farther down on his lion’s back. Warmth coursed through his veins and Fern moved surely and swiftly under his hands and Blue and Lance surged along beside him and, if this was what belonging felt like, he figured it was all right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!! Comments/kudos are always good things, and you can always come scream at me at fihli.tumblr.com!
> 
> Also... happy birthday Pidge omg
> 
> -Gab


	7. Nothing To Lose

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shiro doesn't remember, and Hunk makes food.

**SHIRO**

Shiro watched Keith and Lance ride off into the darkness on Blue, and it felt like he was being kidnapped by Galra Tech all over again. Lost, helpless, and more than a little confused, if he was being honest with himself.

It was rough. Now that he was feeling more like himself, and now that he was able to stand and walk around, he thought that he’d be able to piece together more that had happened with Galra, but his brain was still fuzzy. More than fuzzy; it felt like he’d been completely rewired.

He remembered some things. Vague, distorted visions of losing his arm. Nova’s calm voice undercutting the pain. Other people, not Galra Tech, but people like him —prisoners— milling around and talking, sometimes to him, mostly amongst themselves. He couldn’t remember anything about them, not names, not appearances, just shadows and murmurs.

Something about the smallest of the new paladins, the girl, _Pidge_ , made his chest ache. Maybe she knew information about his time in prison. It seemed insensitive to ask, especially now that she’d been taken away from the Garrison and the normal life she’d known. 

Shiro hadn’t been in acquaintance with normal for a very, very long time. 

He clenched his right hand, the metal one that moved and acted like a flesh and bone limb, and it whirred. It was amazing, really. He didn’t want to think that, didn’t want anything that had been forced on him without consent to merit anything close to awe, but he was a pilot. He appreciated machinery, technology, and the weird fusion of the two that had made him a little less human. Made him a little more of a weapon.

No one was looking at him, they were all crowded around the back of the trunk, trying to convince Pidge to come down so they could continue driving. Coran had located a safe place to hide until Lance and Keith returned, but Pidge had made herself comfortable with Cookie on the top of the truck, and she was immovable. He didn’t remember much of Galra, but he remembered the Holts. She looked like Matt, she acted like Matt, enough to make his heart ache. Shiro glanced back again. They were all still distracted. He unclenched his fist, and watched the purple fire engulf the surface of his palm.

It coated his entire hand in an instant, glowing and pulsing along with his heartbeat. He knew it was fire-hot, could cut through metal, and was his best chance to take the fight to Galra. They’d given it to him, forced it upon him, taken him from his family, and they were going to regret it.

“Shiro!” Allura called back across the sand as, behind her, Cookie leapt down with Pidge on her back. He extinguished his hand, crossing his arms quickly. His prosthetic made him part Galra, he knew that, and he didn’t want to make Allura trust him any less by showing off its magical powers. “We’re heading to the hiding place, if you want to—”

“I’ll be right there,” he said, realizing mid-word how rude he'd been. “Oh, god, I didn’t mean to cut you—”

“It’s fine!” Allura interrupted him, and then clapped a hand over her mouth. He heard her curse through her fingers. “Sorry!”

She wheeled around and made for the cab of the truck, swinging herself into the driver’s seat and slamming the door shut behind her. The truck revved, and Shiro turned his back on it.

He ran a hand through his hair. He still had his prison haircut; the half-shaved deal with the shock of hair falling into his face. He’d caught a glimpse of himself in one of the truck’s polished hubcaps; part of his hair was _white_. He didn’t know if it was from Galra experimentation, or extreme stress, or both. 

He’d gone from one stressful situation to another. Gone from worrying about himself, staying alive one more day, struggling to remember the one before, to worrying about six other people and a squad of huge lions. He was supposed to be a _leader_ , he was supposed to _lead_.

What if he failed? What if people died?

They were supposed to be talking out the biggest corporation in the world. Shiro had no idea how far-reaching they were, how deep the corruption had dug, how many people they had weaponized, how evil they really were. He could barely even remember them cutting into his arm. What if that happened to him again? What if that happened to someone like Pidge, with her devious eyes and her white-tooth smirk? What if that happened to someone like Coran, with his upbeat attitude and crazy grin? What if that happened to Lance, or Hunk, or Allura?

What if that happened to _Keith?_

Shiro clenched both fists and his mechanical one whirred.

He would die before Galra touched them.

**_Takashi._** Nova sounded like she always did, calm and collected. Shiro honestly wished he felt the same way.

_Yeah?_

**_I know you’re thinking about dying heroically, but Allura Altea is going to kill you herself if we don’t leave soon._**

“Shit!” Shiro dashed towards the back of the truck, hauling himself in and closing the hatch behind him in one swift movement. Nova was on him in an instant, nosing at his face until he pushed her away. She batted at his shoulder with one huge paw as he moved farther into the truck. 

Pidge had set herself up again on her top bunk; an array of equipment surrounded her as she leaned back on Cookie and fiddled with a tiny blinking piece. Hunk was in the corner closest to the cab with Strike flopped on the floor next to him. A stove and a sink folded out from the wall, with a funnel out of the ceiling to keep smoke out of the truck, and Hunk was rifling through a mini fridge, his arms and the tiny counter by the stove already full of ingredients.

“What doesn’t this place have?” Shiro asked, keeping his voice light and making his way over to Hunk. He turned on the sink and washed his hands quickly; there was even a soap dispenser attached the the wall. Hunk dumped a head of lettuce and a few tomatoes onto the counter.

“A grill,” he said. “I’m gonna have to make these burgers on the stovetop, which isn’t _terrible_ , but—” 

“You’re making burgers?” Pidge’s head shot up. Shiro felt another twinge in his chest. Was it even possible she was a Holt? She’d said _Gunderson_... “Can I have—”

“Cheese and ketchup and tomato,” Hunk rattled off over her. “Lance wants every condiment because he’s a monster and jalapenos. Coran wants mushrooms, cheese, and mustard. Allura just wants cheese. Tomato and mayo is my jam. Shiro?”

“Uh, lettuce and cheese?”

“Done.” Hunk pointed his spatula at him. “And dude, about what I said earlier about you and Keith? I just wanted to apologize. It’s not your fault you guys have history and you just met us like five seconds ago.”

Shiro couldn’t help but smile at Hunk’s sincerity.

“I’ll do better,” he promised. “We’re a team. Although I’m pretty sure you’re just telling me this because you don’t know what Keith wants on his burger and you think I know.”

Hunk grinned. “And?”

Shiro rolled his eyes. “Just, like, a lot of relish.”

“I knew it!”

“So, Shiro,” Pidge said, rolling over onto her stomach on the top bunk like she’d been waiting for an opening, “about that Galra prison.”

“I can try and answer your questions,” Shiro warned, “but it’s all still a blur. I don’t know much about what went on in there. I’m having the same crazy day as you guys.”

“Were there other people in there with you?” she asked. “Like, other prisoners?”

“Yes, but I can’t remember faces, and I _really_ can’t remember names. Like I said. It’s all a blur.”

“Okay,” Pidge said, and rolled back over, slow enough that Shiro saw the obviously dejected look on her face. “If you remember anything, let me know?”

“Will do, Pidge.”

Nova padded over to where Strike was lying and collapsed next to her, pushing out at the other lion with her paws until Strike retaliated. They were both growling, and Shiro realized that it was laughter. Hunk nudged him with his elbow.

“Our lions are bros.”

“They’re sisters, genius,” Pidge called from her bunk.

“ _Bro_ defies gender, Gunderson,” Hunk shot back.

A staticy rumble filled the truck, and Shiro realized it was coming from his helmet, sitting where he left it in his pile of armor. Static erupted from its speaker again.

“GUYS?”

“Lance?” Hunk darted over to his own helmet and fiddled with it, and soon Lance’s voice was as audible as it would be if he was talking to Hunk on speaker. “Lance, we’re here!”

“We got to the Galra base,” Lance said, quieter now, like he didn’t want to get caught. “Keith’s inside.”

“He's _alone?_ ” Shiro gestured to Hunk and he tossed him the helmet. “Lance, what the hell!”

“Chill,” Lance said, and Shiro did anything but that. He started pacing. “The only way in was through this duct, so he went in and me and Blue are out here covering his ass.”

“Covering?” Pidge asked. “So there’s enemy fire?”

“Not yet,” Lance said. “But it’s Keith. He’s not very subtle.”

“Oh my god,” Shiro muttered. 

“What’s happened so far?” Hunk flipped a burger.

“Nothing really,” Lance said, casual like it was an uneventful day at the beach. “Me ‘n’ Blue are just sort of chilling. There was a drone, but Blue took it out before it saw us.”

“I doubt that,” Pidge called from the bunk. “You should probably prepare for incoming.”

“You coulda hacked this place no doubt, Pidge.” Lance sounded far away, like he’d put the helmet on the ground to stretch his arms. “I’m not even a techie and I see like, four things that you could improve. Tech company my _ass_.”

“Next time,” Pidge said, and Shiro didn’t miss her proud grin.

“Just be careful,” Shiro said. “Call us when you see Keith and Red.”

“Will do, boss-man,” Lance said, and terminated the link. Shiro tossed the helmet on the bunk below Pidge’s —he was pretty sure Lance had claimed that one— and started pacing again. Hunk threw a burger into the air and Shiro watched it spin once, twice, three times, before landing back into the sizzling pan. He arched his back and heard it snap. He cracked his neck, and all of his knuckles.

“Shiro, you’re freaking me out,” Pidge said.

“I’m just worried,” he heard himself reply.

“Lance can handle it,” Hunk said, and started setting out buns and condiments. “He can be an asshole, but he’s fast and smart.”

“Like when he’s crashing our simulator in class,” Pidge added. Shiro’s eyes widened.

“He _what?_ ”

“I’m sure steering a huge lion’s super different,” Hunk said hurriedly. Shiro groaned.

“It’s not just Lance I’m worried about,” he managed to get out. “Keith’s…”

“Emo,” Pidge suggested.

“Also an asshole.” Hunk pressed his spatula down on a burger and steam rolled from the stove.

“I was going to say impulsive,” Shiro said. “I’m guessing you guys didn’t know him very well at the Garrison?”

Pidge shrugged. “They only let me in last year.”

“Pidge is a baby,” Hunk explained. “And I was never around the pilots a whole lot. I hung out with Lance ‘cause we were paired together, but that’s about it.”

“Attached at the hip, more like it,” Pidge said. Hunk shrugged, grinning. 

“We got in a lot of trouble.”

“Lance got into trouble,” Pidge corrected. “Hunk worried the whole time.”

“Keith was kind of the opposite,” Shiro said. “He never really showed the impulsive asshole side of him around any of his instructors, which I guess was for the best, because when he finally did—”

“Is that why he got booted?” Hunk asked. Shiro barely felt it as the truck slowed to a halt. The ATech rigging really was something else.

“I’m guessing, yeah,” he replied. “I think he started looking for me. We haven’t had a chance to talk yet.”

The truck flooded with cool night air as Coran popped the hatch and they all piled out, Hunk with a big plate of burgers, Pidge with an armful of tech. Allura slid a panel out from the underside of the truck, low enough that they could sit on the sand, and they all crowded around it. She’d driven them behind a rock outcropping; hidden from the road and hopefully Galra.

“Hey, Shiro, got a second?” Pidge had put her gadgets safely on the table and was a little farther from the group, and Shiro joined her with his hands shoved in his pockets. “Um, you know who I am, right?”

“I have some guesses,” Shiro replied. She really did look like him, like Matt Holt. He hadn’t noticed that first night in the desert, he’d been too distracted by Keith and the wound in his side, but _now_... “Katie?”

Pidge actually flushed at that, and looked down at her shoes. 

“I like Pidge better.”

“I’ll call you whatever you want me to,” Shiro said. “What happened?”

“Galra took them,” she said, and her fists were clenched. “My dad, and my brother. I joined the Garrison to get information. I had to change my name, cut my hair, run away from home—”

Shiro put a hand on her shaking shoulder. “We’ll find them, Pidge. My memories can’t be gone forever, maybe that’ll help us find out where Galra took your dad and Matt.”

“You were friends with him,” Pidge said quickly, and rubbed her nose with her arm. “You can’t remember anything?”

“Not a thing,” Shiro said. “Not about being captured by Galra, anyway. It’s all fuzzy. I hate it, it’s like not knowing who I am.”

They stood in silence for a while, both lost in their own heads, until Hunk called over that Pidge’s burger was getting cold. She left, with one last almost mournful look back at Shiro, and he just shoved his hands farther into his pockets. The cool morning breeze ruffled his shock of white hair, and he resisted the urge to reach up and pat it down. Nova was in his head, but he could feel her presence curled up in a corner of his mind like she also wanted to give him his space.

“Hunk asked me to give you this.” 

Shiro turned in time to see Allura, a burger in his hand, held out like an offering. He took it, stammering out something that he hoped was thanks, and took a big bite of lettuce and cheese to give his mouth something else to do. She stood next to him, looking out over the dark desert, her arms crossed.

“You really remember nothing about Galra?”

He chewed slowly, partially because Hunk’s burger really was the best he’d ever had, and partially because he didn’t want to answer. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to talk to Allura; she seemed like someone he could get along with, intimidating connection with their truck and five giant lions aside. He just— 

“I don’t have any of the answers you’re looking for,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. 

She regarded him. “Who says I’m looking for answers?”

“The big truck full of stolen equipment doesn’t really suggest a fun road trip,” he deadpanned, and took another bite. She looked away.

“They murdered my father,” she said quietly, and Shiro had the sudden feeling like he was intruding on something personal, even though she’d been the one to approach him. Silence fell, and he didn’t feel comfortable continuing with his burger, so his hands stayed by his sides. Minutes passed, and he coughed.

“Allura?”

“I have no idea what they’re up to,” she said, and her eyes were bright and fierce. “I have no idea how many people they have hidden in their facilities; people like _you_. Brilliant people. People they’ll use to further their goal, whatever that is.”

“But,” he said, and trailed off.

“But I intend to find out,” she finished for him, and took his burger right out of his hands and bit into it. She passed it back, and he took a bite of his own. 

“You’re in, right?” she asked through her mouthful of burger. He grinned.

“You’re the one who gave me a big lion. Who could say no to that?”

She smiled back. It wasn’t very big or very joyful, but it was something.

“Try telling Nova that she was _given_.”

The black lion growled in the back of Shiro’s mind, and he held up his hands in surrender. “I wouldn’t dare.”

“ _Shiro?_ ”

Muffled static erupted from Shiro’s helmet, lying on the table next to Hunk’s bottle of ketchup, and Pidge picked it up and tossed it to him. He tapped a button next to the mic so everyone could hear.

“Lance?” Shiro asked, trying not to let the panic he felt bubbling up inside show in his voice. “What’s going on?”

“We got her,” Lance said. It sounded like he was running, or like he was out of breath, or both. “We got Red. We had to fight a lot of people, and Keith—”

Shiro’s entire heart started crawling up his throat.

“—he’s banged up pretty good, but he’s okay.”

“I’m fine, fuck off!” Keith’s voice rasped from far away. Hunk whooped, and Pidge had both fists in the air.

“I’m sending your helmet our coordinates now,” Allura said, fingers flying over a tiny glowing screen. 

“Get here quick or all the burgers’ll be gone,” Coran said, and Lance gasped audibly from the other end.

“C’mon, Blue, those sick sons of bitches are gonna—”

And the comm link fizzled shut. Shiro collapsed onto one of the benches, running both hands across his head. It was still strange, feeling metal brush skin when he was expecting human fingers. It would probably always be strange.

Hunk started wrapping the last two burgers, one with way too much relish and the other with an overabundance of jalapenos, in saran wrap. Strike and Cookie were in the distance, running and chasing one another and kicking up sand, and as he watched, Nova loped over to join them. Allura settled down on the bench next to him, close but not too close.

And there, almost lost in the hazy sunrise, were two blurs. Shiro shielded his eyes with his hand, and squinted.

Nova noticed first. She roared and spun and her sisters flanked her; Cookie low to the ground and Strike huge and bristling, They took off, perfectly in sync, and met Lance and Keith halfway. Shiro watched as Lance jumped off of Blue’s back and helped Keith down, slinging one of the other boy’s arms around his shoulders and carrying the rest of his armor across his back. They stumbled over to the truck, and Shiro and Allura ran to help them the rest of the way.

“You’re fine,” Shiro said, poking at Keith’s side until he hissed. “Bullshit.”

“Hey, we got Fern,” he snapped back. “So it was worth it.”

“Fern?” Allura asked.

“It’s short for Inferno,” Lance said, putting both his and Keith’s armor in a pile next to the truck and grabbing his burger. “Because we found Red in a Hot Topic.”

“It’s nice,” Shiro said. “Fern, I mean. It’s a good name.”

Keith sat down in the sand, too tired to even argue, and accepted the burger Lance handed down to him before joining him on the ground. Shiro stood with Allura behind them, grateful that they weren’t arguing. Apparently it took a fight with Galra and complete exhaustion for them to get along, but at least it was doable. 

As the sun slowly rose over the mesa, Shiro watched five lions wrestle and kick up dirt, finally together and free after a very long time. Nova lifted her nose and roared to the sky, and Shiro felt it vibrate in his chest. That was joy, that was a declaration, pure and simple, and he heard it loud and clear.

_**We are coming, and we will not be stopped.**_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Comments and kudos are more appreciated than you know :)) You can always come yell about paladin-related things to me at fihli.tumblr.com! 
> 
> Tentative date for the next chapter is 4/16. 
> 
> -Gab


	8. Constellations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance takes a walk at night, and Keith talks to Shiro.
> 
> (I hope y'all liked season 3 because I sure did holy fucK)

**LANCE**

The truck was mostly dark, and it still smelled like burgers.

Lance was in his bunk underneath Pidge, and he could hear her soft snores, punctuated randomly with huffs of breath from Cookie, who he guessed was curled around her. Pidge was so small that both her and her lion fit on the bunk.

Lance and Blue were a different story. She was underneath the bunk, and he didn’t know how, but he knew she was sleeping. It was weird, sharing his mind with another being, but it was nice all the same. It felt familiar, her thoughts twined with his, even if it had been jarring at first— like jumping in a pool on a hot day. Harsh, at first, but a welcome shelter from the heat.

Allura and Shiro, as the truck driver and the leader of the paladins, had decided to keep the truck where it was parked and take a night. Coran had agreed wholeheartedly; he’d driven though the previous night and looked like he wanted to fall asleep for ten thousand years. The last Lance had seen of him he was curled up in the truck’s cabin, knocked out. Hunk had downed two more burgers and followed suit, crawling onto a bottom bunk (there were six beds all together, Lance, Shiro, and Hunk were on bottom bunks, while Pidge, Keith, and Allura took the top), and falling asleep with Strike beside him. Allura, after washing her hair in the truck’s kitchen sink and tying it back up, did the same.

Shiro was in the corner of the truck, at Allura’s desk, with a tablet open in front of him and Nova curled up at his feet. He’d started reading the news, first for clues about what Galra was planning, and then to catch up himself. He was two years behind, and it looked like he was still engrossed. Allura had made him a cup of coffee in the truck’s microwave, and it looked like the cup was still full; cooled hours ago, making a wet ring on the black desktop.

Every couple of seconds a breeze curled through the open vents of the truck, smelling like crisp desert air at night, and every time it brushed across his face, Lance got less and less tired. 

“Ah, fuck it,” he muttered to himself, and swung his legs out of bed. The minute his feet touched the cold truck floor Blue was awake too, nudging his kneecaps with her giant forehead.

_**Trouble?**_ she asked, her voice a low, sleepy growl.

_Nah,_ Lance thought back, suddenly very aware of how quiet the truck was. Shiro was the only one awake, and it looked like he was too busy reading to know what was going on. _I just want to go outside. Wanna come with?_

_**Lead the way.**_

Lance went out the side door of the truck, slipping through himself and holding it open for Blue to jump down first. He followed, closing the door as quietly as he could and leaping off of the truck’s ledge. His bare feet sunk down into the cold desert sand, but it felt nice. He wiggled his toes deeper with every step and shoved his hands into his jacket pockets as he and Blue walked slowly away from the truck. 

Stars splashed across the night sky like an oil painting, and Lance spun in a circle while still keeping step with Blue. Purples and blues and grays all mixed together in a tapestry of stars and planets and galaxies, and Lance’s wide eyes weren’t able to take it all in. It was overwhelming. He’d seen the sky at night a million times in a million places, and it never stopped being overwhelming.

_**You want it, don’t you?**_ Blue asked. _**To be up there. In the stars.**_

“That’s what I’m going to school for,” Lance said. “Flying. Spaceships and stuff. I’m not all that great at it, though.”

_**Why go, then?**_

“You said it,” Lance said. “I want to be up there. With a crew, a crew of my own, and a ship. That’s a pilot’s job, so I’m going to be a pilot.”

_**There’s adventure everywhere, Lance.**_

Lance spluttered. “Blue, come _on_ , I don’t want adventure. I want to be a pilot.”

Blue fixed him with a stare, and her eyes looked like the ocean in Cuba. Aqua blue around the edges, melting into deep darkness. Uncharted waters. He’d always told his mom, back home, that he was going to do great things. Get a job flying a ship, go on missions, make them proud. That was what kept him going at school, that’s what kept him taking tests and staying up studying and busting his ass to even keep up with something he knew he wasn’t good at.

“I’m going to be a pilot,” he said. Blue cocked her head.

_**If that’s what you want.**_

“It’s what I want,” Lance said, suddenly indignant, suddenly vehement. Heat coursed through his veins despite the chilly night air. This wasn’t what it was going to be; five lions and a truck and some girl with white hair weren’t going to fall from the sky and tell him what he was going to do with his life. “I promised you and Allura I would help with this whole Galra thing, but after that I’m done. I’m going back to the Garrison, _and I’m going to fly spaceships_.”

_**Fine,**_ Blue agreed, and somehow, the absence of an argument was worse.

Lance took a deep breath and looked at the sky again. It was beautiful, and cold, and distant. Nothing like the fierce heat of the lion next to him, vibrant and so incredibly alive. Lance squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head.

_I’m going to be a pilot,_ he thought, forgetting that Blue was in his head. Thankfully, she didn’t respond, just launched herself forward, tackling something that lunged out of the darkness towards her.

Under the dim light of the stars, Lance watched as Fern and Blue wrestled in the sand. He could just barely make out a figure sitting on a rock in the distance, with a familiar turned-up jacket collar— _Keith_. Lance didn’t remember seeing him back in the truck, he’d just assumed the other boy was asleep on his bunk, not off being emo in the desert.

_**You’re off being emo in the desert though,**_ Blue said, and swiped playfully at Fern’s ears. 

“Shut up,” Lance said, and scuffed sand with his bare heel as he walked over to Keith’s rock.

Keith looked up as soon as Lance entered his line of vision. He looked tired, and a little sad, and a lot like he didn’t want Lance to be in his personal space. He also didn’t have any shoes on, and he was wearing pajama pants with little paw prints on the red fabric.

“Can I sit?” Lance asked, and sat before Keith could reply.

“So,” Lance said. 

“This is weird,” he started again when Keith didn’t say anything in response.

“Lions are cool, though,” he said after five minutes.

“Can you talk?”

“Kogane.”

“Red paladin.”

“Your pajamas are cute.”

“Blue said you’re being emo.”

“Did you die?” Lance poked Keith’s shoulder. “I _saw_ you blink, Kogane, come on!”

“Oh my GOD!” Keith threw his hands into the air and scooted to the farthest edge of the rock. “Can I not have five minutes of fucking alone time!”

From behind them, Fern growled, and Blue growled after her. Lance grinned.

“Fern said you’ve been out here for like two hours.”

Keith rolled his eyes. “I know what she said. _And she should keep her mouth shut!_ ”

Fern growled again, but a kind of stuttering growl that sounded an awful lot like a laugh. Keith rolled his eyes again, crossing his arms and retreating further into the turned-up collar of his jacket. 

“And Coran showed me where the previous paladins kept their clothes,” he muttered, his voice muffled by the jacket. “I bet you have cute pajamas, too.”

“Ooh, I hope so,” Lance said, and nudged Keith’s shoulder with his elbow when he didn’t respond. “Come on, Kogane, aren’t we supposed to be a team? You, me, and Hunk, we’re like… I don’t know, the primary color squad.”

“Doesn’t mean we have to hang out,” Keith said.

“Well, you took the best rock in the desert, so I’m sitting here in silence to contemplate my place in the universe and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

“As long as you can do it _quietly._ ”

Lance laid back across the rock, still almost warm from the day’s sun exposure, and traced constellations with his eyes, naming them under his breath every time he found a different one. 

“ _Orion… Ursa Major… The Big Dipper…_ ”

Blue came over after a while and curled up next to him on the sand, pointing out star formations with her tail, telling Lance their names as he followed them with his pointer finger. They both agreed that their favorite was Leo, both for Lance’s birthday and for other, more obvious reasons. Keith sat, stone-faced, staring out into deep space, as Fern laid next to Blue, her fiery fur mixing with Blue’s.

Time passed, until Keith cleared his throat and traced a triangle pattern in the sky.

“That’s Aquila,” he said. “The eagle. It’s my favorite.”

Lance traced Leo again. “Leo’s my favorite, because—”

“Your birthday,” Keith finished. “I can hear, you know. And it’s Blue’s favorite, because she’s a fucking lion.” Fern growled something from the ground. Keith huffed out a laugh. “And it’s Fern’s favorite, too, because of course it is.”

“Why’d you get kicked out of Garrison?” Lance asked. Keith immediately drew back, and Blue slapped her tail across Lance’s shoulders in warning. Lance brushed her off. “Come on, Keith, you gotta let me know eventually. Remember? Team?”

“I started looking for Shiro,” Keith said through gritted teeth. “Is that good enough?”

“No,” Lance said. “It was a big deal for _months_. What happened?”

“I’m not telling you,” Keith said, and stood. “Come on, Fern, we better get back to the truck.”

“Come on, Kogane! _Come on!_ ” Lance stood, too, wincing as Fern brushed past him and whacked the back of his legs with her tail. Lance watched as Keith and Fern walked back to the softly glowing truck. Blue jumped up onto the rock and watched with him.

_**You pushed him too far.**_

“I know that,” Lance snapped back. “How’s he ever going to be on a team if he’s so damn secretive all the time?”

_**Is he being secretive, or are you being nosy?**_

“Oh, come on, Blue, the Garrison made such a big deal out of kicking him out. What if it has something to do with our fight against Galra? What about that, huh? _Nosy—_ Come on, I’m not being nosy!”

Blue gave him a look. Lance’s shoulders slumped.

“Okay, _fine_ , lion mom, I’ll fucking drop it. Happy?”

_**Keith will tell you himself when he’s ready.**_

Lance laughed, and it rung throughout the desert. “Yeah, right!”

**KEITH**

Keith wasn’t happy, but then again, he couldn’t really remember a time where _happy_ was a feasible emotion for him, so everything checked out.

He’d felt _calm_ , though, laying on that rock with Lance and Blue and Fern, pointing out constellations and hearing Lance ramble on to his lion about his birthday. Calm was good. Calm was almost happy. Calm was the absence of the white-hot rage that usually fueled him, and when that was dampened, he almost felt like a real person. He felt like a real person on that rock looking up at the stars.

And then Lance, jackass Lance, brought up the Garrison, and in true jackass Lance fashion, wouldn’t let it the fuck _go_. Keith picked up a rock and hurled it into the desert. 

“I hate everything,” he said, bending down to grab another rock. Fern pushed a good one towards him with her nose, and he picked it up and flung it as hard as he could. “ _Everything_.”

_**You could tell them.**_

“Yeah? And what goddamn use would that do?” Keith asked. “We found Shiro. He’s back, and he’s relatively normal, and safe. What use is in dredging up all that Garrison shit again?”

_**It could help in our fight against Galra.**_

“Yeah? And what is that, exactly?” Keith asked. “There’s an awful lot of no-information floating around this Allura girl and Coran. Even you’re not really sure what’s going on. Just, boom, you get a telepathic lion, now you fight against the corporation that basically runs the world.”

_**You were against Galra before you even met us.**_

“No, I was _for_ finding Shiro,” Keith said. “And I did that. Kind of. What’s stopping us from walking away from all this shit right now?”

_**Takashi Shirogane is never going to walk away from this.**_

“You sound so sure about that,” Keith said, but he knew Fern was right. He couldn’t shake the purple glow he’d seen around Shiro’s prosthetic hand, his _Galra_ hand. It wasn’t an illusion, he knew that. He needed to talk to Shiro. Maybe come clean about the Garrison, maybe get the truth about Shiro’s capture. “What’s the game plan? You gotta at least give me that.”

_**Allura Altea has the game plan,**_ Fern said. _**I would follow her into war, and so should you.**_

Keith sighed and scuffed up sand with his bare heel. 

“Where you go, I go.”

Fern bumped his side with her shoulder, nuzzling up against him with her warm fur and heartbeat he could feel in sync with his. She was reassuring, even though he didn’t want to be reassured, and he found himself threading his fingers through the fur behind her ears and scratching. 

After she nudged him again, he heaved himself back onto the truck and opened the back hatch for her to leap through. He could still see Lance and Blue, off in the desert, still standing by the rock, so he left the hatch open. Three other lumps on bunks were accounted for— Pidge, Hunk, and Allura— and Shiro was where Keith had left him, sitting at a desk and reading something on a tablet.

“Please tell me you’re not gonna start dabbing,” he said, reading the year-old article over Shiro’s shoulder. The older man flinched, dropping the tablet and rubbing one hand across his tired eyes. 

“I’m just trying to catch up on the world,” he said. “A lot’s happened in two years.” 

“And a lot of it’s Galra,” Keith said. “I’ve kept up. Looking for you kept me up to date, I guess. They’re everywhere. Government, Wall Street.”

“Scary stuff,” Shiro said noncommittally, bending down to pick up his dropped tablet. Keith nudged his shoulder.

“You’re exhausted.”

“I’m fine.”

Nova growled, which Keith took to mean _Shiro’s a fucking liar._

“Just go to bed, Shiro.” 

“You go to bed,” he shot back, dragging a finger across the tablet’s screen. Keith flopped back on the floor, hoping that Fern would catch him before he hit the ground, and grinned when she did. He leaned farther onto her side. 

“I missed you, man.”

Shiro lifted his head at that, and smiled softly down at Keith.

“I missed you, too.” 

He put the tablet down and joined Keith on the floor, using Nova as a backrest, scratching his fingers absentmindedly down the back of her neck as she curled around him.

“So,” Shiro started. “You got kicked out of the Garrison.”

Keith spluttered. “I thought we were having a moment!”

“Moment over,” Shiro said, but he was grinning. “You don’t have to tell me about it if you don’t want to.”

“Maybe later.” Keith rubbed the back of his neck with his hand. “A lot of shit happened since you got taken. I’m still trying to process a lot of it.”

“Join the club.” Shiro stretched out his legs and leaned farther back onto Nova. “I feel like half a person since I escaped from Galra. If I don’t even remember what happened, how am I supposed to help anyone else?”

Keith kicked Shiro’s foot with his own. “Shut up. You’re more capable than all of us combined, _leader of Voltron_.” Shiro laughed tiredly at that.

“Voltron.”

“Yeah. What the entire fuck is Voltron, anyway?”

“Hell if I know.”

“Speaking of what the fuck,” Keith started, “what’s up with your arm? Did you lose it or did—”

“Galra cut it off,” Shiro said. “It was one of the experiments they did on me. One of the only successful ones, anyway.” He ruffled one hand through his white shock of hair and ran his thumb across the scar cutting through his nose. “They fitted me with this prosthetic, and even I don’t know what all it does.”

“I saw it glow,” Keith admitted.

Shiro nodded, and lifted his hand. The purple glow started at his fingertips and moved downward like a lightning bolt, bathing his entire hand in light. He swiped upwards, slicing through the corner of the desk with his hand. The metal triangle desk corner fell to the floor, partially melted.

“Holy shit,” Keith breathed.

“That’s all I can do with it,” Shiro said. “It gets white hot and destructive, and I can control it. Sort of. I’m still working on it.”

“Here I felt kind of bad that you didn’t get a bayard,” Keith joked. “You have a badass glowing hand that can cut through metal.” 

Shiro laughed at that, getting to his feet and holding out his Galra hand to help Keith off of the floor. He hesitated for a heartbeat —he’d just seen that hand slice through a desk like it was made of butter— but he grabbed it anyway. It was cold, but not uncomfortably so, and Keith was on his feet in an instant. Fern loped over to his bunk and leapt on top of it, laying so there was still enough room for Keith and a pillow up there, too. Nova followed, curling herself protectively next to the bottom bunk. 

Behind them, Blue jumped into the truck with Lance on her back. He slid down in silence and closed the hatch, saluting to Shiro before stripping off his jacket and hanging it on his bunk post. Blue wedged herself on Lance’s bunk with him, and Lance began snoring in seconds. 

“Night,” Shiro said as Keith clambered up to the top bunk.

“Night,” Keith replied, and Shiro ducked down, out of sight. With Fern in the bunk with him, the bed was full, but not too cramped, and it was just the right temperature that Keith felt himself drifting off almost immediately, which was unlike him.

Fern draped her tail over his legs and nuzzled closer until he could feel her soft, huffing breaths tickling the hairs on his neck. He turned and pressed closer to her. He felt warm. He felt safe.

_**I will always keep you safe.**_

“God, I hope that’s true,” Keith muttered back. Fern rasped her tongue up his cheek.

_**You will never have to be without family ever again.**_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Comments and kudos are more appreciated than you know :)) You can always come yell about paladin-related things (AND SEASON 3) to me at fihli.tumblr.com!
> 
> -Gab


End file.
